


the same deep water as you

by moonrocks



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Family Issues, M/M, Panic Attacks, Period Typical Attitudes, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2020-10-20 02:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: In the summer of 1981, the conclusion of the Atlanta case leaves the BSU on shaky ground. Expected to continue business as usual, a conflicted Holden struggles with his panic disorder and the aftermath of a partnership on the rocks, while Bill tries to salvage the shattered pieces of his home life.Holden has never been good at fixing things, but for Bill he would try.





	1. victory lap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sequel to [weak hearts and blank spots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354458) and [beige walls and pea green couches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472662).

_ June 1981 _

_ FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA _

When Holden wakes up, his brain is pounding against his eyelids. 

His blaring alarm clock does nothing to placate his budding hangover. With each sharp ding, his pulse swells in his temples, headache spreading through the crown of his head down his neck. He groans and turns over on his side to press his face deeper into the fluff of his pillow. The alarm continues to _ beep_, _ beep_, _ beep_. 

Holden reaches over and shuts it off, slamming his palm down against the button. 7 AM. Today is Tuesday, and last he heard he’s still expected at Quantico. 

So much for a victory lap.

Holden gets up.

The sky is just beginning to brighten with the sunrise, murky light pouring in through the blinds in his bedroom and stinging his unadjusted eyes. The events of last night come back to him just as hazily; Bill standing on his doorstep with rain running off his coat, Blondie buzzing through the stereo speakers, two glasses and a bottle of whiskey half-empty on the counter. Holden can still feel the miasma of cigarettes and wet June heat that clung to his skin as the city breathed beneath his feet and Bill looked at him, something tenuous and apologetic in his eyes.

Everything Holden can recall about their conversation is drenched in alcoholic fuzziness—like his memories were swarming with television static when they settled in his head—but those eight words stay with him more than anything Bill could say about Debbie or Ed Kemper or the Atlanta case. 

“Nancy left.” 

He’d sounded disconnected when he spoke, like he was already compartmentalizing, putting the pain someplace it couldn’t reach him. 

“She took Brian and she left.”

Bill is already awake when Holden finds his way into the living room. The sheets he gave him are folded and neatly stacked, along with the pillow and knitted blanket. Bill is turned away from him, unpacking a spare suit and white button-down from the carry-on he brought to Atlanta, and Holden wonders if he got any sleep at all. He wants to say good morning, but the domesticity of it causes the words to stick in his throat.

“Coffee?” he asks instead.

Bill nods, looking at Holden with idiosyncratic sternness and affection like he always does. For some reason, Holden’s chest tightens. He offers Bill a smile, but it’s too small and stiff to fracture any of the awkwardness lingering from the night before. He disappears into the kitchen to fiddle with the coffee maker.

Holden should be used to seeing Bill like this, dishevelled and dressed down and almost off his guard. He should be used to spending mornings with him after sharing motel room after motel room for the better part of a year during road school, but this is different, almost uncomfortably intimate. Work had no hand in bringing Bill to his doorstep at one in the morning last night. 

As steaming coffee streams into the pot, Holden pops a couple aspirin to dispel his headache then makes himself a smoothie with what protein powder and frozen fruit is left in his otherwise barren fridge. The coffee maker beeps and Holden pours a generous amount into a mug, then hands it to Bill. 

“Thanks,” Bill says, clutching it gratefully. He glances between the coffee maker and Holden. “Are you not having any?”

Holden swirls the smoothie around in its plastic cup and it sticks to the sides, thick and gloopy like cement mix. “I thought I should cut down.”

“Since when did you become a health nut?” 

“Since it felt like I was having a heart attack twice a week.” 

His response hangs there for a moment, then Holden smirks. Bill exhales through his nose in a breathy laugh that sounds relieved more than anything. It feels good to be able to joke about it now, like the tension it was causing back in Atlanta is beginning to clear up.

“Wendy said I should be reducing the stress in my life,” Holden says with a shrug. “Of course, that was before Atlanta.”

“You told Wendy?” 

“I needed advice.”

“She should ask Ted for a raise,” Bill says behind the lip of his mug, shaking his head. 

“Well, when I told her she took it a lot better than you did.”

Holden states it as a mere matter of fact, but it still punctures a sore spot, something neither of them have apologized for. He regrets opening his mouth as the tension returns just as easily as it left. Bill shifts, tongue pressed against his cheek, but he immediately backs down. He sips at his coffee and sits down on the arm of the couch. 

A minute passes. The room grows quiet and the space between them stretches an inch in every direction. Holden feels restless, a jittery hand tapping against his thigh as he downs the rest of his smoothie. It tastes like wet chalk dust in his mouth.

His offer still stands—if Bill wants to talk about what happened, he can listen—but this could be where the blurred line of their personal and professional relationship shifts back into focus. Holden can only hope that this thing between them will uncomplicate from here on out, but the idea of going back to being friendly strangers, knowing nothing about each other that extends beyond Quantico, oddly feels like a loss. 

“I should get ready for work,” Holden finally says. He goes to toss his cup in the sink and realizes his dress shirt is still in there, soaking, the soap bubbles dissolved in the water. He sets it on the counter. “Are you coming in today or should I cover for you?”

“Honestly,” Bill says with palms upturned, sifting for the right words, “I don’t know what to do.”

Holden frowns. 

In different circumstances, he might know what to say, but this is so far beyond his reach. Whatever happened between Bill and Nancy is none of his business, but as he looks at Bill he feels pulled down into the water with him, just on the other side of the shore near the shallow. He sits beside Bill, trying to comfort him with closeness if not words, and the undertow crashes above his head. Bill’s shoulder gently presses against his. 

“I can cover for you,” Holden reiterates. “Take some time. You can stay here if you want. There’s a spare key taped under the mat.”

Bill runs a hand down his face. “Can I use your phone?” 

“Sure. There’s also one in the bedroom if you want more privacy.” 

Holden leads Bill to it, then quickly grabs the suit, dress shirt, and tie he was planning on wearing to work from his bedroom closet. He slips out of the room while Bill is still dialling. 

Holden tries not to eavesdrop as he runs an iron over his pants and his jacket in the living room, instead focusing on the _ whoosh _ of steam and sloshing water as he presses the seams flat and smooths out the wrinkles. He can hear Bill speaking, but his words are indistinguishable, voice muffled behind the partially closed door. 

Bill is still in there by the time Holden’s finished. He lays his ironed clothes out on the back of the chair and stands there, hands at his sides, listening to the click-clack of buttons being pressed as Bill dials another number. Not knowing what else to do with himself, Holden grabs the dress shirt Bill unpacked and begins to iron that too. 

The fabric is soft under his fingertips as he runs his hands over the creases. He can hear Bill speaking to someone clearer this time. His voice is raised, but he sounds more frustrated than angry. Holden can imagine how his jaw must be tensed, the corners of his mouth held tight in a grimace. Steam leaks from the iron and dissipates in the air. 

“Nancy, just tell me where you are.” 

A pause. Holden catches himself listening and returns his attention to the shirt before he accidentally burns his fingers. He fiddles with the buttons on the cuffs, adjusts it needlessly on the ironing board. It’s much bigger than any of the shirts Holden owns, a little less well maintained and thin from so many washes, and there’s a ghost of a stain on the breast pocket. As he shifts the fabric, the smell of Bill sticks in his nose; aftershave and tobacco, coffee with no cream or sugar, and hotel room hand soap. Familiar, like the scent of pine needles and baked goods on Christmas morning.

“Does Brian know?”

Holden’s stomach sinks. He folds the dress shirt and sets it on top of Bill’s bag, then retreats to the bathroom with his own clothes to run the shower. 

“Nance.” 

He hears it through the tiled walls, a plea, softly spoken but edging on desperation. It makes Holden feel out of place in his own apartment, like inviting Bill to stay the night and inserting himself into his problems was a pathetic and intrusive thing to do, a reflection of his own feelings of inadequacy and isolation, his need to be needed. Holden isn’t sure what he thought would happen. Maybe he thought he could fit the shattered pieces back together and Bill would look at him differently, like someone he could turn to not out of convenience but out of trust.

Instead, Holden stands there, listening as Bill tries to clean up whatever’s left of his marriage, not knowing what else he can say or do. He steps under the showerhead and lets the spray drown out Bill and all the confusing thoughts that come with him. 

When Holden comes out of the bathroom ten minutes later, his apartment is empty and uncomfortably quiet. Bill is gone, his bag and ironed shirt missing from the end of the couch and his coffee mug discarded on the counter. Holden is finished towel drying his hair and getting dressed before he notices a sticky note scrawled with chicken scratch stuck to the phone receiver. 

He reads it.

_ Thanks for the couch and the coffee. _

_ — B _

Holden folds the note into a square and puts it in his pocket. 

*

Bill tosses his cigarette butt out of the car window as he pulls up to a house with a moving van parked in the driveway. 

He recognizes it as one of the several homes Nancy showed him from a stack of realty brochures; two stories, red brick and white slotted siding, a midsize porch and a blooming magnolia tree out front. The fragrance is flowery and overpowering like an old woman’s perfume in church, the scent of petals mixing in with the sour, snail-like odour of rain-slicked pavement. 

The neighbourhood is a newer subdivision, drenched in suburban quaintness. It’s located on the outskirts of the city, closer to the upper-middle-class schools and daycares, parks and playgrounds notably tucked away from the river and its surrounding woodlots. It makes sense why Nancy would choose this place. 

On the outside, it appears just as safe and untainted as their neighbourhood did when they first moved in, but Bill knows that any one of these houses, no matter how picturesque and borderline bucolic, could easily be marred by chalk outlines and police tape.

A rowdy group of school-aged boys runs up and down the street, some on bicycles decorated with stickers and acrylic paint while the others chase after a soccer ball, no doubt ecstatic for the summer break which began only last week. Across from them, a man wearing khaki shorts and socks with sandals waters his lawn with a garden hose even though it already rained that morning. 

The archetype of the suburban dad; the briefcase, the coffee mug, the ugly ties he got for Father’s Day; cutting the grass on weekdays after he gets home from work, barbeques on Saturday and road trips in the summertime. Bill always tried to fit into that role, a square peg in a round hole, but the reality of interviewing men who murder children or have sexual intercourse with severed heads always diminished any normalcy he found in those mundane, everyday things. 

Maybe it was never really him in the first place. Throwing himself into his work let him escape that.

Eventually, Bill sees the front door open and Nancy steps out onto the porch, smoking a cigarette with an arm crossed over her chest. Seeing her hurts more than Bill thought it would. He bites the inside of his cheek and his eyes sting, but the tears never come.

After a brief moment of hesitation, Bill gets out of the car. He crosses the street to meet her, stopping when he reaches the sidewalk. Any closer and he might be able to trace the lines of her face, count her eyelashes and her freckles like he did on their wedding day. She says nothing, just takes another drag of her cigarette, smoke pouring out through her pursed lips. She walks over but stops at the edge of the lawn.

“So this is the house you settled on,” is the only thing Bill can think to say.

The words are unintentionally tense. Nancy nods, looking down at the cigarette in between her fingers. Bill notices her ring finger is bare. Hurt stirs in his chest again. Resentment, guilt, anxiety, contrition; whatever it is is indistinguishable from the poignant ache that cuts through him like a dull razor, severing heartstrings and sinew. 

Bill outstretches his arms, palms upturned, anger already beginning to harshen his edges. “Are you going to let me in or are we going to do this out here?”

Nancy looks at him blankly. Aside from the insomnia that bruises her under eyes, she looks disaffected, staring straight ahead like she was building up her resolve all this time. Bill can only guess what she thinks of him now. 

“What do you want, Bill?” she finally says. 

A moment passes before her words properly settle in the hollowed-out spaces between Bill’s heart and his ribs. Every single syllable burns and throbs.

“What do I want?” he asks incredulously. “I want to know why my wife took my son, gutted my house, and left without a fucking word.”

Nancy remains infuriatingly calm. “I did tell you, Bill. I told you Brian needs a fresh start.”

Bill glances behind her at the moving van parked in the driveway. It reminds him again of their empty home; furniture and family photographs stripped away like flesh stripped from bone. It feels all the more cruel as Nancy stands in front of him trying to justify its mutilation, dismissing the life they shared together and the fifteen years of marriage it took to build it like it was never a sure thing after all, easily demolished and taken away.

“You really think upending his entire life will fix this?” Bill asks. “Nancy, what Brian did is going to follow him wherever he goes. A new school and a new neighbourhood won’t change that.” 

Nancy inhales around her cigarette, then exhales again. The smoke hides her face as it contorts from careful passivity to barely stifled anger. 

“You may think I never listen to you when you talk about your work, but I do.” Her voice finally cracks, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. “I looked through your notes while packing, the case files, the crime scene photographs, the photographs Brian saw.”

“Nancy, what the hell does this have to do with you taking my son?” 

The look in her eyes is nothing but vitriolic when the haze clears. 

“The absent father, the domineering mother, those _people_ you interview,” she sneers. Her hands shake as she flicks ash onto the grass and she sounds so much more fragile when she speaks again. “God, Bill. What have we done to him?”

Bill has no answer for her. Anything he can think to say gets blocked by the lump in his throat. He looks at Nancy, but she no longer meets his eyes. Her cigarette has been smoked down to the nub. She still clings to it like a lifeline. 

“Nance,” Bill pleads. “At least let me come home.”

Nancy shakes her head. “I can’t do that. I can’t raise a son whose father—” 

She stops herself mid-sentence and Bill can only fill in the blanks. 

A father who works too much; a father who comes home late; a father who is absent; a father whose dealings are with the dead and those who made them that way, not Fourth of July pool parties and playing catch in the yard, afternoon baseball games and summers days spent at the playground. 

“I can take time off. I can spend more time with Brian.”

“I already asked you to and you said no.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Ask for a transfer within the bureau,” Nancy says after the question hangs there for an uncomfortably long time. “Something that takes up less of your time. Your work is hurting this family, Brian and I both. Your son never sees you. I never see you.”

Somehow, Bill knew this was coming, but it still hits him with a weight too heavy to describe, threatening to crush him against the pavement underneath his feet. Maybe Nancy is right. Maybe he should have been there, maybe he should have tried harder with the son who never loved him in the first place. But avoidance was always simpler and anger is easier still, so Bill lets his anger swallow him.

“My work, Nancy? My work?” Bill scoffs if only to mask the hurt. “I was here on Fridays, I was here on weekends. I was here for every goddamn visit from social services and every useless fucking therapy appointment.”

Nancy looks pained, her cheeks wet with tears. “Bill, please—”

He ignores her. “And in the meantime I was in Atlanta, chasing down a man who might've killed twenty-four children all while babysitting Holden and placating government bureaucracies and grieving mothers.” He sighs, rubs at his tired eyes. “If I could have been home, I would have been, Nancy. But I was asked to consult on possibly the most important case I have ever been involved with for the FBI.”

Nancy clenches her jaw and speaks through gritted teeth. “Important? Is your son not important?”

“Did you not hear me? Twenty-four children are dead.” 

“One child,” Nancy spits, the lines on her face deepening. She takes a step towards him and raises a single finger. “One child is dead, and Brian saw him die and he said nothing.” She seems near hysteria now. “Have you seen the way other children treat him now? Have you seen the way our neighbours look at me?” 

Bill exhales sharply, almost laughs. “Is this fresh start for Brian or for you?” 

“They look at me like I raised some kind of monster,” she snaps. “Like I’m the one who needs to be forgiven.” 

“Our son is _ not _ a monster.”

“He is not _ my _ son.”

A pause. 

Nancy raises a hand to her mouth to hide the horror that passes over her face as she realizes what she said. Her bleary eyes seem to grow redder. Bill is too worn down to do anything but stare and bite the inside of his lip until he tastes the sick pang of rust. 

Bill thinks about leaving. He thinks about getting into his car and driving until he runs out of road, but then the door opens behind Nancy and Brian pokes his head out. Nancy quickly rubs at her face to wick away the tears and turns to him.

“Brian, sweetie, go back inside,” she chides, but Brian ignores her.

He steps out onto the porch, still wearing his pyjamas. They have little police cars on them, emergency lights flashing red, white, and blue. Bill gave them to him for Christmas last year.

“Dad?” Brian says and Bill feels his heart drop to his stomach.

“Brian, what did I just say?” 

Nancy heads towards the porch and attempts to urge him back inside, gripping him close to her and running a hand through his bedhead, but he slips out of her grasp and sprints out onto the lawn. He stops halfway, sprigs of grass sprouting between his bare toes. Bill looks at his son and his son looks at him.

“Dad,” he says again. 

He looks confused, wide brown eyes round like moon pies.

“Everything is okay, Brian,” Bill reassures and he tries his damnedest to keep his eyes from getting glassy, blinking the tears away. “Your mom and I were just talking.”

Brian takes a step towards him and Bill moves to meet him, but then Nancy is there, gently tugging Brian by the arm. Brian lets himself be pulled.

The door slams shut behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's only 1981 in canon but that won't stop me from naming this fic after a song from the cure's 1989 album disintegration


	2. crucifixus

Holden drives to work, the note Bill left him pressing up against his chest through the pocket of his jacket.

He tries not to overthink it, tries and fails and tries again. The morning they spent together replays in his head like a ten-cent nickelodeon, over and over, different details sticking out each time. Holden recalls every glance and every touch; the way their defences were down when they first saw each other from opposite sides of the apartment, how their habitual back and forth let them settle back into a routine of normalcy for a moment, accented by a brush of shoulders and a smirk hidden beneath the lip of a novelty mug.

Every aspect of that morning begs to be analyzed and picked apart like Holden would an interview or a case file, but he resists the urge, trying to distance himself from the anxiety that inevitably comes with it. He flexes and unflexes his hands around the steering wheel as he turns a corner, watching the wipers wick spittly rain from the windshield. He pushes every thought of folded bed sheets and warm coffee and freshly pressed dress shirts from his mind.

Traffic slows to a grinding halt. Holden flicks the knob of the radio. Static pours through, then the overexuberant lilt of an FM radio DJ fills the airwaves.

“Good morning, _B101.5_ listeners. It’s a scorcher out there! Your forecast today is sun and rain with an 80% chance of showers and a humidity index of 75%. At the moment, the temperature sits at 87 degrees. Happy Tuesday, everyone.”

After an advertisement for dish soap, _9 to 5_ by Dolly Parton begins to play. Holden closes his eyes and sighs. Someone honks their horn. After a minute or two, traffic begins to move again. The pattering of rain stops and starts and stops and starts as he drives through an underpass, orangey light illuminating the inside of the car, and as he emerges a stretch of houses passes by his window in a blurry streak. They all look the same.

Despite himself, Holden wonders where Bill is and why he left so suddenly, there and gone again like he was seeing ghosts. He has a good idea, but the thought of Bill trying desperately to sort things out with Nancy stirs up something inexplicably uneasy in his stomach. It’s a hurt that wants to be confronted and validated and shown to be true, but Holden ignores it, not wanting to uncover an explanation he’d rather avoid.

The song ends, followed by an obnoxious jingle for dog food. At a stoplight, Holden turns the dial to the local news station and immediately a flare of anxiety snakes its way through his chest, his foot almost stuttering on the brakes.

“Yesterday, officials held a press conference to announce that Wayne Williams, a twenty-three-year-old Atlanta native suspected in the recent mass child slayings, was being indicted for two counts of murder for the deaths of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, both adult victims.”

The aspirin Holden took earlier is beginning to wear off, his headache returning to throb dully in his temples, and the overcast sunshine suddenly seems too bright. He stares at the nat speckled license plate of the station wagon in front of him and keeps listening even though he’d much rather sit through more advertisements.

“The FBI, who were involved in apprehending Williams, have handed all inactive investigations over to local police. For many, the conclusion of this case has left unanswered questions. Mothers of the victims have come forward to express their—”

Holden shuts the radio off with shaky fingers.

The light turns green and the car behind him blares their horn.

*

The temperature regulated lobby inside of Quantico is a much-needed relief from the syrupy humidity outside. Holden wants to linger there, watch as men in suits with tacky ties sip coffee and bicker, while new recruits do their daily PT in the courtyard past the wall-spanning windows, but he calls for the elevator, briefcase clutched by white-knuckled fingers. He gets in.

As it descends, the air around him grows stuffier and stuffier with each passing floor, doing nothing to curb the anxiety that was kicked up by the radiocast. Holden resists the urge to loosen his tie. Eventually, the elevator dings and the doors open. He gets out.

Gregg is the only one sitting at his desk when Holden walks in, hunched over a tape player, a cup of coffee from the dispensary machine in his hand and the morning newspaper opened on his desk. He raises one oversized headphone from his ear and smiles with lips pressed tightly together.

“Welcome back.”

By way of his simple greeting, Holden assumes that Gregg has already heard the news about the Atlanta investigation. Any additional congratulations—which Gregg notably withholds—would be unwarranted given its unsatisfying conclusion. Gregg appears uneasy, shuffling around with some papers to avoid eye contact, and Holden realizes he must look even more hungover under these harsh fluorescents than he did back at his apartment.

Holden offers Gregg an equally as stiff smile. “Did Bill come in?”

Gregg shakes his head. “No, not that I saw.”

Holden thinks of Bill’s empty office—his old one, the one with the cards still pasted around the door frame—and nods. Gregg goes back to whatever he was listening to before Holden came in.

Wendy, on the other hand, is talking on the phone, the door to her office slightly ajar. Holden sees her glance at him as he passes by, her expression stony and unrevealing but just as bleak as anything Gregg could offer him. Holden says nothing, not even a mouthed hello, and averts his eyes, stepping into his own office and shutting the door. He sets his briefcase down on his chair and sighs at the stack of papers that accumulated on his desk during the time he was in Atlanta.

Most of his morning is spent going through them; case files on potential interviewees and typed up transcripts of the interviews he missed, the copies of the tapes slipped into a brown folder with his name written in a familiar, doctoral scrawl. He also sorts through less interesting things like consent forms and financial statements he needs to sign for their funding, willing himself to stay awake even without the pull of caffeine to drag him through the day.

Around noon, his phone rings. He watches as the handset rattles against the receiver and tries to wave away the hope that Bill will be on the other end. He answers it.

“Behavioural Science Unit. Special Agent Holden Ford speaking.”

“Good afternoon, Agent Ford,” a receptionist replies and Holden suppresses his disappointment. “Assistant Director Gunn is requesting you in his office.”

Another elevator ride, another opportunity for his thoughts to suffocate him; Atlanta and its dead children and their mothers and Bill and Brian and Nancy. Everything sits heavy in his conscience as he watches the elevator indicator climb from floor to floor until it finally halts.

Holden approaches the desk of Ted’s receptionist. Her nameplate reads Mary Ann. She smiles at him with plump cheeks that are bright pink with blush; young, pretty, timid, big hair. Ted must have gotten rid of the previous receptionist—who was admittedly a lot less pleasant—when Shepard resigned.  
  
“He stepped out for a moment,” she says, motioning to the door, “but feel free to wait for him inside his office.”

Holden would rather wait by reception, delay the inevitable as much as possible, but he does as she says. Mary Ann closes the door behind him and the quiet swells inside the space.

Holden stands there, hands in his pockets, trying to decide whether Ted is going to chew him out or extend a further congratulations. Either response would probably break him in different ways.

The office has also changed since Shepard left. There are new family photos hung on the walls or propped up on his desk, different accolades from his career with the FBI. A stuffed mallard sits on the windowsill, its wingspan outstretched and held up with wire. The emerald feathers on its head catch the sunlight shining through the shattered raindrops dripping down the glass.

Holden respected Shepard, maybe even admired him, but everything he did for the BSU has been unwillingly tainted by the panic attack Holden had that night at the retirement party when Shepard called him an arrogant, self-serving twerp. He can still feel the cool metal of the car door pressing up against his back as he scrambled for his pills, lungs scrambling for air.

Ted is different and the past is further behind them every day, but the guilt Holden felt—for walking out on the OPR inquiry, for Vacaville, for his failings during the Atlanta case, for the wounds he let fester between him and Bill—still remains. Holden reaches into the pocket of his jacket to thumb at the note Bill left him. He digs the corner of the paper underneath his nail and it comforts him.

When the door opens, his hand quickly returns to his side. Ted strides into the room, patterned maroon tie pin-straight again his stark white button-down, suit pitch black. Where Shepard was gruff and unrelenting, Ted is impish, something about his face pinched and almost constantly smiling, whether it be his eyes or the slightly upturned corners of his mouth. It makes him harder to read like his real intentions are lingering somewhere beneath the surface. But the way he speaks—straightforward, honest, reassuring—says otherwise.

“Agent Ford.” Ted extends his hand for Holden to shake. Holden does so, making sure his grip is firm and steady despite his nervousness.

“Sir.”

Ted motions towards the chair. “Please.”

They sit down on opposite sides of his desk. Holden presses his jittery hands to the tops of his thighs, placating them. Ted crosses his legs, one hand resting over his wristwatch. Holden notes his body language and after a moment, he does the same, spine straight, shoulders back, open and inviting.

“I would like you to know that the bureau is more than satisfied with your work on the Atlanta case,” Ted says. “You delivered results just as I asked.”

“Thank you, sir.” Holden swallows. “Your appreciation is, well, appreciated.”

“Of course, but that’s not why I brought you here.” Ted reaches over and opens the bottom drawer of his desk, producing a folded copy of the _New York Times_. “I brought you here to ask for your discretion.”

“My discretion?”

Ted slides the paper across the desk so Holden can scan the headline; _Conclusion to the Atlanta Child Slayings Case Leaves Much to Be Desired_; and the subheading; _FBI investigative techniques responsible?_ Holden settles back in his chair as dread thickly lines his stomach, a sweat breaking out behind his ears.

“This morning, the _Times_ released an opinions piece questioning the unit’s involvement in the Atlanta investigation,” Ted continues. “Now, the FBI has always had its critics, but I must advise that you do not speak to the press about this matter. If the general public begins to question our methods, our backers may rethink their investment and pull out of the project entirely.”

To Holden, it sounds like more bureaucratic nonsense, more maneuvering this way and that to avoid stepping on the toes of those who hold all the power in their pockets and a money bag in each fist. Holden thinks of the mothers, repeats their names in his head. He thinks of their children, repeats their names in his head.

And all he feels is numb, numb for the people who have to deal with the aftermath while he runs back to Quantico with his tail between his legs to get patted on the back by Ted and the other directors who spend more time at the country club than they do in the field. It’s a poor consolation prize, but no poorer than the twenty-some-odd unresolved cases that the government dropped into the laps of every local police department in Atlanta.

Holden knows that the conclusion of this case is going to hang over the entire BSU like a raincloud, joining the haze that was left behind by the botched OPR inquiry. He already saw it in Gregg and Wendy this morning. Even though they both have enough leeway to distance themselves from the case entirely, unlike Bill and Holden, the tension between them still snapped and bent like a rubber band.

Maybe the people higher up in the FBI food chain have umbrellas, but Holden is caught in the storm, rain filling up his shoes, and the only other person who should be there in the water with him is gone.

Holden lets his anger fizzle under his skin.

“The remaining investigations have been deactivated without much of a conclusion,” he says, knowingly speaking out of turn but too perturbed to stop himself. “Did the bureau really not expect there would be backlash?”

Ted sighs.

“Of course we did, but the city was confident enough to close the investigation and the bureau agreed.” He taps his index finger against the inky newspaper headline. “An opinion piece like this holds little weight, if any. All I’m asking you to do is not add fuel to the fire.”

“So there’s no chance that the inactive cases will be reopened?”

Ted looks taken aback for a moment, like his confidence in Holden has taken a hit with the revelation that Holden is just as unsatisfied with the investigation as the press is, but then his expression sobers.

“Holden, your job is to investigate, not to involve yourself in politics,” he says firmly. “Do not let this distract you from your work. Now that you and Agent Tench have returned from Atlanta, our schedule can proceed as normal.”

Holden bites down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying anything else and digging this hole of his deeper.

“This case is no longer the FBI’s concern. You are not permitted to have any more contact with the families of the victims or the local police departments without my say so. Your involvement ends here. Understood?”

In no way does this resemble the lashing Holden got from Shepard, but he feels similarly embarrassed and forced into place, the anxiety in his chest rising too high for comfort. Holden nods, tries to relax, counts his breaths.

He moves to stand, but then Ted asks, “Is Bill available? I’d like to speak with him as well.”

Holden settles back in his chair, nervously gripping the armrests on either side of him. “No, Bill had to take the day.”

Ted shifts and so does the air. He leans across his desk with hands clasped, college ring glinting on one finger. “It recently came to my attention that Agent Tench was partially absent from the Atlanta investigation.”

Holden pays attention to his breathing again, counts down from five, in and out and in. “He had a family matter to attend to on weekends, but otherwise he was present.”

Ted narrows his eyes. “A family matter?” He rests a hand inquisitively on his chin but drops the question just as soon as he must consider the answer. “As head of this department, I want to ensure that your team is working as a cohesive unit. Going into the future, I would prefer if you and Agent Tench were on the same page.”

“Of course, I understand.”

A beat passes.

“Look, Holden. I’ve listened to the interrogation tapes, watched the way you two work together, and I’ve concluded that these consultations must be a dual effort between you and Agent Tench,” Ted explains, the enthusiasm returning to his eyes. “If our methods are going to be practice within the FBI, I would like to have a solidified task force with both of you at the head.”

In any other circumstance, Holden would be just as keen and eager as Ted to further their activities outside of their immediate research, but now he only feels empty, his thoughts turning to Bill and how he should be sitting in that chair beside him with a cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth, smirking, almost letting it fall to the carpet. Somehow it always stays put.

Holden finds his eyes drifting from Ted to the empty chair to that ugly taxidermied duck sitting near the window. Its dead and beady eye stares at him, black and glassy like a drop of oil.

Ted must follow his gaze because he smiles.

“My father gave that to me,” he says somewhat wistfully. “He was an avid hunter, but I always preferred to watch rather pick up a gun myself, analyzing the flight patterns, listening for the sounds, writing them down in my field book and directing my father where to go.”

Ted rises from his seat, grabs the duck from the sill and sets it down on the desk in front of Holden. His hand comes to rest on Holden’s shoulder and the dull pull of panic weave between Holden’s ribs.

“To me, it represents the work we do here. Always the watchful eye, the observer, ducks fall where they may.” Ted chuckles. “I see something in you, Holden. No organization can innovate without its proteges, like no bird can fly with just one wing.”

Before Atlanta, Holden would have let a meeting like this inflate his ego, another footnote to cite when his self-worth was wavering or he needed to defend his increasingly impulsive behaviour, but now he only feels sick to his stomach. The bird continues to stare at him, unblinking.

Ted drops his hand from Holden’s shoulder. “That will be all, Agent Ford.”

When Holden gets back into the elevator, he suddenly becomes aware of the bottle of Valium rattling in his jacket pocket. He has fifteen pills left. He counted this morning.

Make it fourteen.

*

For a while, Bill drives with nowhere to go, blowing smoke from his cigarette, sunglasses on even though the sky is overcast. He fears that if he stops moving, for even a minute, what happened with Nancy will finally catch up to him, pull him apart at the seams. 

So he keeps going, watching as the sidewalk passes perpendicular to his window and the yellow road lines skip under the wheels of his car. It temporarily keeps the hurt at bay, a makeshift distraction while he has to do without alcohol. The rain is sporadic, but each time the downpour starts up again, splatting against the windshield in fat, tearlike droplets, Bill feels relieved. It grounds him, drowns him out.

He keeps turning down streets he recognizes but never thought much about, whether he was driving home from church in his Sunday best or picking Brian up from school on the odd day that Nancy asked him to. He maps out the roadways in his head and routes how they might lead him home, but revisiting that house with its hollowed-out bedrooms and carpeted floors that now span without interruption would be too painful.

Thinking about Holden hurts in a similar but different way, like the ache is deeply seated in a separate spot. Bill remembers what Holden said that morning about the key to his apartment being taped beneath the doormat, but going back there now would be too far over the line.

He had left in the first place because they were so close to crossing it.

When Holden poked his head out of his bedroom with hair mussed from sleep, made him coffee, and spoke in that voice of his that somehow sounds even softer in the late AM, Bill knew his toe was urging towards the edge of something he could not come back from.

Sleepy eyed and undershirt rumpled, rubbing away the hungover look on his face, puttering around in the kitchen, the overconfident, arrogant, and frustratingly dedicated Holden Ford, and Bill had woken up in his apartment, drank his coffee, teased him about his morning habits and watched as he smiled and looked away.

It almost felt normal.

So Bill had to leave, partly to salvage his marriage but partly to save himself the trouble of confronting whatever made him feel at home in that barely furnished apartment, sleeping on those 600 thread count sheets, thinking about Holden in his bedroom only a couple feet away.

Before Bill realizes, his car is pulling down the street and past the church.

He eases his foot onto the brake and slows to a stop in front of it, remembering warm days in early spring when Brian played soccer with those older boys and Nancy complained about scrubbing the grass stains from his knees. It feels all so far away now, the air no longer light with the breeze but thick and sweltering, the kind of atmosphere that suffocates you and only lets its fingers drop from your neck come September.

Bill parks, stamps his cigarette out on the pavement and goes inside.

The church is open but empty, still smelling like incense from morning mass. Every step he takes echoes through the pews as the last time he was here floods back to him; the community meeting he attended with Nancy once word of the murder spread through town. Bill had been uneasy going in and uneasy coming out after all that nonsense about cults and pagan rituals caused unsubstantial concern, but in the end, he would have preferred a bit of satanic panic over finding out his son was the one who tied that boy to the cross.

Maybe he should repent. The thought almost makes him laugh.

He sits down on the pew closest to the door and stares at the age-worn Bibles and yellowy songbooks curling in the heat. He never prays anymore. He rarely did growing up unless his father gave him an earful, but it became less of an afterthought and more of an act of resistance when he was discharged from the army. Collection baskets and hymns and stained glass windows seem more than useless after witnessing men clutching Bibles that have bullet holes through the pages or military chaplains counting on rosaries snaked between fingers slippery with blood.

A door opens by the pulpit and Father Martin steps out, the priest who usually conducts the services Bill attends with Nancy and Brian. By now he must recognize Bill as the father of the boy who took the stories of the New Testament too literally, but he says nothing.

In that respect, Bill can understand why Nancy wanted to get away, avoid the fear of being demonized by the people who are supposed to be your neighbours, but it seems like shortsighted wishful thinking to move to another neighbourhood a mere ten miles away and expect all of that to change.

They live in a small town. The story was all over the news. The names were redacted, but it would be easy enough to connect the dots that lead to Brian and match him with those other boys that no one sees at school anymore. If Nancy really wanted to avoid judgement, she would have gone to the city where Brian could fade into the indistinguishable crowds of street kids and juvenile delinquents found in places like Detroit or New York City or Boston. But her life is still here, just not a life she wants to share with Bill. Not the way he is now.

The more Bill thinks about it, the more he feels hollow and sick, his body aching for no reason except to draw the emotional hurt out somehow. The wall around him is probably built too high already to let him cry now, but when he thinks of his son and his botched attempt at fatherhood another brick jiggles loose and crumbles at his feet.

Bill stares at the crucifix above the pulpit and unwillingly sees Brian there, nails hammered into his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what the fuck ted


	3. holy wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for using alcohol to cope (sorry, Bill) and descriptions of panic attacks (sorry, Holden).

As it nears six, Holden decides to pack it in for the night.

He sorts the loose folders stacked on top of his desk into their designated filing cabinets then turns off his lamp and locks up his office. Gregg has already gone home for the night, the newspaper he was reading that morning folded up and thrown into the bin. A local paper, not the _New York Times_, but the cover story is unsurprisingly the same.

Meanwhile, Wendy is still in her office, light pouring out through the crack beneath her door. Holden hovers outside of it. He thinks about going back to his empty apartment and falling into the same anxious routine, eating dinner alone in front of the television and watching the evening news until the pull of the Valium drags him to bed.

After a moment of deliberation, he knocks on Wendy’s door, once then twice, until he hears a stern, “Come in.”

Wendy is sitting at her desk, her form solely illuminated by the lamp in the corner. Her attention is on a copy of the_ American Journal of Psychology_, one foot tucked behind her ankle and her cat-eye reading glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose as she scribbles notes into the margin with a fountain pen.

Besides exchanging files and transcripts with Gregg, Wendy kept to herself most of the day. Holden was beginning to think she was just another person to add to his list of relationships he’d need to fix, but seeing her now, hyperfocused on her work and not much else, feels like a comforting return to normalcy.

“Am I interrupting anything?” he asks, lingering in the doorway.

“Nothing particularly interesting,” Wendy says without glancing up from her magazine. She tucks her hair behind her ear, every strand falling into place. “Just an article about the effects of irregular meals on the hypothalami of rats.”

“Sounds riveting.”

“I know.” She makes a quick note, then looks up at Holden sheepishly hovering around her desk with raised brows. “Is everything alright, Holden?”

“Yeah, of course.” He feigns ignorance, afraid that Wendy might be hinting at something else. “Glad to be back.”

Wendy flashes him a small smile, but she appears unconvinced. She shifts, the room shifts, and Holden immediately knows her question was just a precursor to her reading him as easily as someone might the Sunday morning classifieds.

“Why did Ted call you into his office earlier?” She sets her pen down perpendicular to the page. She has that analytical look in her eyes, the one that never seems to disappear only intensify. “Was it something to do with the Atlanta case?”

Holden steps further into her office, closing the door needlessly behind him. He puts his hands in his pockets.

“Yes and no. Ted wanted to talk to me about Bill.”

“Bill?” Wendy asks. Her head is slightly cocked to the side with an inquisitive form of worry that likens her to the archetypal psychologist Holden has seen on TV. She leans forward in her chair. “What about Bill exactly?”

“His commitment to the department, I guess,” Holden says with a shrug. “Ted seemed concerned about Bill skipping out on the investigation, at least to the effect that it might harm the cohesion of our unit.”

Wendy purses her lips in thought. “Ted said that?”

Holden nods. “He then proceeded to lecture me about innovation and how he . . . _sees_ something in me.”

He makes a gesticulation, trying to grasp at something unnamed. What Ted told him back in his office is still sinking in, uneasily so. It only leaves him feeling confused, not reassured or any more confident than he was before Atlanta left him on shaky ground.

“What is he playing at?” Wendy asks, partly to herself. “Is he trying to build up your confidence after he told Bill to keep an eye on you behind your back?”

Holden feels his stomach sink. “Wait, you knew about that?”

“Bill told me.”

The embarrassment is immediate. Holden sucks at his teeth.

“Well, maybe Ted thinks I can handle myself now without Bill and his blinders,” he says defensively. “I proved in Atlanta that I could still get results. It was my idea to stakeout the river.”

He sounds more pleased with himself than he planned on while formulating the words in his mouth. An arrogant part of him wants to believe that Ted is telling the truth, but another part of him wants to ignore it. Holden has already been burned once. Why would he put his hand back on the stove knowing Ted initially praised him then went ahead and asked Bill to babysit him without consulting with him first?

Wendy scoffs at his response initially, but then her face shifts back to confusion, then concern. “Holden, _can_ you handle yourself without Bill?”

Holden chews on the inside of his cheek.

Even if he could conduct himself with the level of professionalism expected of him, he still needs Bill for other reasons. It was like Ted said, in interviews they play off each other, conveying information with just glances, knowing exactly how to go about drawing a confession. Although recently Holden has noticed that they seem out of sync, not cooperating like they used to. Holden wants to attribute it to Bill being so on-and-off, here and there and gone again while he dealt with issues at home, but even before Atlanta made things complicated their partnership felt tainted, tainted by what Holden pulled with Speck and walking out on OPR and visiting Kemper, among other things. Holden wishes they could go back to what it was like before when all they had to worry about was Road School and which diner in town had the best lunch deals.

“No,” he says as he remembers Thursdays spent in Atlanta mulling over humidity dampened case files until he thought he had found a lead, only for Bill to pack up and fly back to Virginia before he had a chance to tell him.

He would spend those weekends alone thinking about the case from the moment he woke up in the morning to the moment he went to bed. The cycle would repeat and repeat and repeat, urging him into a corner of isolation and near obsession, with all his doubts and failings nagging at him constantly. He would stare at the telephone, wanting to call Bill but knowing he might hang up. If he answered at all.

“Atlanta was hard enough with Bill there,” Holden continues, “let alone without him.”

“I understand.” Wendy looks at Holden, her eyes softening, then asks, voice lowered and uncharacteristically hesitant, “Does Ted know about Brian?”

Holden frowns. “Bill told you about that?”

“Not long after it happened,” Wendy says. “It was before you were officially assigned to the Atlanta case.”

“Oh.”

Holden understands why Bill hid his family issues in lieu of the case, but the realization that Bill was open to talking about it just not with him hits Holden like a freight train barreling down the tracks. Embarrassment rises on his face and causes him to break eye contact with Wendy. He feels his chest compress against his heart as he sits down on the spare desk chair across from her and rests his elbows on his knees.

“Jesus, guess I was the last one to know. Bill sprung it on me in the middle of the investigation,” Holden explains. Just saying it imprints another fresh bruise onto his skin.

Wendy regards him for a moment. “You do realize why it would have been irresponsible to tell you?” she asks. She sounds clinical, like her analysis of the situation is already locked in place. “Why Bill might have told me instead?”

Holden shakes his head, not wanting to acknowledge that it bothers him, let alone confront it, especially not after this morning when one word about his panic attacks made Bill stiffen.

“Holden, you had just gotten out of a mental institution a month prior.” Wendy shoots him a look, eyebrows raised, worried but incredulous. “Ted told Bill to look out for you, not add to your stress. Bill knows about your panic disorder, correct?”

“Yeah, but why should that matter when he barely even acknowledges that it exists?” Holden asks and it burns him to say. “Back in Atlanta, when he told me about Brian, he chewed me out for it.”

Wendy grimaces, her lips drawing together in a line. “I advised him to be more considerate of your condition, but Bill is . . . old-fashioned.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Wendy pauses to gather the proper words. “The masculinity of his generation begets traditional displays of manhood and crucifies any sign of emotional weakness. When we were interviewing Brudos, Bill mentioned a code men use to communicate. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember. I thought you were going to tear his throat out.”

Wendy cracks a smile at that, but her expression straightens. “Well, what I mean is you have to learn how to talk to one another. This department depends on you both and if you refuse to get along our research together—not to mention our funding—could be in jeopardy. Do what you can to patch things up with him.”

“You sound a lot like Ted.”

“Well, maybe he has a point.” Wendy pauses, looks mildly disgusted that those words left her mouth. “For once.”

Holden rubs a frustrated hand over his face, picks up his briefcase from the floor, and starts towards the door. As he thinks about going home to his empty apartment again, his hand stills on the knob.

“Do you want to get a drink or something? I’ll buy you a beer.”

Wendy shakes her head, hiding a smile. “You know, you really should avoid mixing alcohol and prescription drugs.”  
  
“Fine.” Holden throws up his hands in mock surrender. “You can drink beer and I can drink Shirley Temples.”

Wendy laughs at that, returning to her journal article, pen in hand. “You already looked hungover this morning. Is that why Bill never came in?”

“Very funny.”

“Where were you thinking of going?”

“The usual place.”

Wendy all but wrinkles her nose at it. “I have plans tonight anyway.”

“What plans?”

“I thought I might adopt a cat.”

*

The bar is especially crowded for a Tuesday night, the unrelenting rain enticing everyone with no better place to go inside. The glossy pavement reflects the red and blue neon glow of the OPEN sign as Holden finds his way into the bar, the piercing din of cicadas cutting through the humid June air.

When the bartender comes over, Holden heeds Wendy’s warning and orders a Coke. Aside from just not wanting to go home, Holden came here in hopes that Bill would show at some point. He has no phone anymore—if the disconnected number Holden called yesterday was any indication—so Holden figures this is the most likely place to catch him, just shy of knocking on his front door.

Holden spaces out as he waits, listening to the drone of the basketball game on the television in the corner and the hum of the radio over top of it, playing some screechy hard rock song. He observes the people moving about the bar like one collective organism; the usual pockets of bikers and their girlfriends, hipsters and spinsters, college students with long hair dressed in thrift store clothing that remind him of Debbie and her friends. He also spies the odd loner or two who stare into the bottom of their glasses or watch the people watching them like Holden is doing now.

He glances at one such loner from across the bar, mid to late twenties, blond hair closely cropped above his ears, possibly military. His denim jacket is worn, fraying around the cuffs, and he looks blue-collar in a ruggedly handsome kind of way, like the men Holden used to see in cigarette commercials as a kid.

He catches Holden staring and Holden pointedly looks away, an odd heat akin to embarrassment—but not quite—simmering in the lower half of his stomach. It feels similar to the jittery uncomfortability he felt this morning when he saw Bill on his couch. That feeling remained even when he tried to look relaxed in the kitchen, ignoring the domesticity of pouring Bill coffee and ironing his shirt before work.

Busy trying to force those thoughts away, Holden barely notices when someone sits down beside him until the bar stool creaks and catches his attention. When Holden turns, he realizes that someone is Bill.

Bill looks even more deflated than he did when Holden last saw him, his jacket speckled with rain and his dress shirt—the one Holden ironed—soaked around the collar. Holden feels the urge to reach out and wick the water droplets off his shoulders but firmly keeps his hands pressed flat against the bar. He assumes things with Nancy went poorly, otherwise, Bill would have no reason to be here.

“What are you doing here alone?” Bill asks.

“I thought you might be here, only I showed up about twenty minutes too early.”

Bill smirks at that, then points to Holden’s drink. “Rum and Coke?”

“Just Coke. Wendy scolded me for mixing alcohol and barbiturates.”

“Talk about a buzzkill.”

Holden snorts. He raises his glass to his lips and takes a sip. The fizzing soda bubbles sting his tongue, reminding him of the anxiety shifting inside his skin, positioning itself where it can easily bubble up and burst. Holden eyes the television to distract himself. A song he likes comes on the radio and his unease burrows someplace less immediate.

The bartender comes over and Bill orders a whiskey. He waits for her to fill his glass halfway, then motions for her to fill it just a little bit more. Holden watches Bill carefully, trying not to look overtly concerned as Bill takes a generous sip of his drink without flinching, lips curling inward as he swallows and exhales sharply, a satisfied hum at the back of his throat.

Holden wants to ask him what the hell happened this morning after he left, but it feels like it might be too sudden, moving too quickly too soon. He passively considers waiting until Bill has had a couple more drinks before mentioning it all, but then Bill is talking again, steering the conversation his way.

“Did anything happen at the office while I was gone?”

Holden clears his throat. “Yeah, Ted asked to see me.”

“What for?”

“He asked for my discretion.” Holden is hesitant to say anything more than that, but the way Bill is regarding him with curiosity pushes the rest of the words out. “There was an article in the press questioning the FBI’s involvement in the case. Something about profiling and how it might lead to . . . selective investigation, or however they put it.”

“Did you talk to the press?” Bill asks skeptically.

It stings, unearthing an old point of contention Holden had thought they dropped a while ago.

“No, why would I do that?” Holden snaps. “And when would I even have time to talk to a reporter? I was with you all last night.”

That marks the first time Holden has acknowledged it out loud. Bill breaks eye contact, shifts on the barstool and takes another swig of his drink. He finishes it off.

_One_, Holden counts.

“He asked to see you too, you know.”

Bill grimaces, then sighs. He closes his eyes and rubs them with his thumb and index finger. “What did you tell him?”

“That you had to take the day.” Holden shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “He was wondering about your absences during the Atlanta case. I told him you had a family emergency.”

“Jesus Christ, Holden—”

“Look, I said I would cover for you, not lie,” he interrupts. “I was already in hot water for asking if the inactive investigations would be reopened. Lying would have made things worse.”

“You asked about the case?” Bill’s grip around his glass tightens. “Holden, there’s nothing more we can do.”

“I realize that, but—” Holden cuts himself off when the bartender comes by again and Bill orders a second drink.

He waits until his glass is full, then takes another sip before saying, “I think Ted just wants you to stop whining and get back to work.”

“Me?” Holden scoffs. “What about you? You never even came in today. Where the hell were you?”

“Where do you think I was, Holden?” Bill bites back. “Use your intuition. Connect the dots.”

“I thought the polite thing to do was ask.”

“Since when do you care about social niceties?”

“Since when were you such an asshole?”

Holden means for it to be a scathing remark, but it leaves his tongue much softer than he intended, juvenile and hesitant like a kid swearing for the first time. For the briefest moment, they slip back into the comfortable balance of unrelenting banter and concealed affection. Bill almost smirks. Holden eases up.

“Look, I talked to Nancy on the phone,” Bill says as he stares down into his drink. He twists it against his palm and the whiskey sloshes. A drop falls onto the bar top. “She told me where she was.”

Holden feels his heart rise to his throat. “Did you see her?”

Bill pauses. Holden gets the impression that he’s asked too many questions. He pulls back, drops his gaze and focuses on his drink to give Bill some room to breathe.

“I did,” Bill says after a while, his voice barely audible above the chatter of the bar. “We talked. Sort of.”

Holden shifts his chair over so he can hear Bill better, legs of the bar stool squealing unpleasantly against the floor sticky with spilt grenadine. “What did she say?”

Bill looks away. Even this close, he feels distant, difficult to reach even with two arms extended, closed off and unyielding like he usually is. Holden wonders if Bill is still hiding things from him—like he did with Brian—or telling him just enough of what he wants to hear to keep the scale from tipping too far in either direction. The way he talks about Nancy sounds like a statement of fact, unmarred by any emotion except surface level indignation once Holden peels back the layers of apathy.

But then Bill turns to him, eyes downcast. “Do you mind if we talk about something else?” His voice sounds close to breaking, held together by a few stray threads. “I just want to enjoy my drink and forget about all this.”

Bill looks so defeated and worn down, like any sympathy Holden could offer him right now would only cut him deeper to the bone, leave him bleeding out on the floor while Holden stood above him with a knife in untrained hands, wondering why his bloodletting did nothing to heal him. All Holden wants to do is lessen his pain, whether that means holding his tongue and letting Bill drink it away or staying put on this bar stool with every unanswered question hanging in the space between them.

Holden nods.

They sit there for a while in comfortable silence, the kind that Holden can only stand sharing with Bill. He listens to the ambient chatter that swells inside the smoke hazed atmosphere of the bar, intertwining pleasantly with the Bruce Springsteen song playing on the radio.

Bill finishes off his drink without a word and orders another one.

_Two_, Holden counts as he racks his brain for something to talk about other than Nancy or Brian or work or Atlanta or what happened last night or what happened that morning. He points to the television in the corner.

“The game is on.”

Bill snorts. “Do you even know who’s playing?”

“Not a clue,” Holden admits, then adds, “You know, I played football back in high school.”

Bill raises his eyebrows. “You? Football? Really?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Holden asks and he feels some of the weight on his shoulders lift when he notices Bill is smirking. “It actually taught me a lot about how to read people, anticipate which way they were going, which play they would take by where their eyes were pointing or the expression on their face.”

“I played football in high school too,” Bill says, “but I was more concerned about what the cheerleaders would think of me or what parties it could get me into.”

Holden rolls his eyes. “Right.”

Bill chuckles. He motions to the bartender for another drink. Holden begins to lose track.

*

As it nears nine, Bill is on his third beer after three glasses of whiskey, while Holden has drank two Cokes and one cocktail; a gin and tonic that was easy on the gin and heavy on the tonic.

Bill feels the soupy draw of alcohol pull him farther from one edge and push him closer to another. Holden is talking about something—probably work and if not work then something related to work—and Bill is only half listening, too intoxicated to follow his anecdotes but sober enough to know he shouldn’t tell them at the next bureaucratic reaming Ted puts them through.

Nonetheless, Holden’s voice is a familiar comfort cutting through the drone of clinking bottles, the staticky radio, and the conversations of other bar-goers, warm and sticky in Bill’s ears like honey and molasses and other sweet things that ooze between your fingers like dish soap.

Bill never looks as outwardly drunk as he inwardly feels, and Holden has probably realized that by now. Bill’s cheekbones feel numb, like his face is drooping off his skull, and something sick and yet not-so-sick churns his stomach, not nausea but a burn that stretches towards his ribs and up his throat. When Bill blinks, it feels like his eyes are moving back and forth in his head, like his brain is swaying in a shallow pool of cheap whiskey and watery beer.

Sometimes when Bill drinks too much, he gets quiet, shrinks in on himself to macerate in his own dejection. Other times he becomes boisterous and more than willingly to shmooze. It’s a side of him that usually comes out at FBI soirees where he inevitably has to rescue a room of bored dinner guests from one of Holden’s rehearsed spiels about the importance of their research. More than anything, it acts as a good excuse for Bill to put his arms around Holden and drag him close, feel the satisfaction when Holden sucks his cheek between his teeth to hide his annoyance as Bill hijacks the conversation with yet another sensationalized story about Kemper or Speck or Brudos, their shoulders pressed up against one another.

At the moment, Bill hovers in a strange limbo between the two, half out of it and half in, pulled forward and pushed away with every glance Holden spares him and every twitch of his mouth as he smiles and continues talking even if he knows Bill is too far gone to listen.

Holden makes it easy not to think about Nancy, but Bill is too drunk yet not drunk enough to confront what that might mean. So, in an effort to get there or at least navigate through it, Bill flags the bartender down for the fifth or six or maybe seventh time to order another beer, but Holden politely waves her away. He takes out his wallet, throws several bills onto the bar top and shoves a couple more into her tip jar.

“I should get you home,” Holden says, lifting his suit jacket from the back of the chair and shrugging it on.

“What about my car?” Bill asks. He tries not to noticeably slur his words. Tries and fails.

“You can pick it up tomorrow morning,” Holden assures. “I think I might lose my badge if I let you drive like this.”

When Bill stands up, all the booze floods his head, but Holden is there to steady him, a hand on his back for the briefest of moments before he removes it to hold open the door.

Outside, the rain has slowed to a light drizzle, the sky still partially lit with a sun that overstays its welcome every June. They walk to the parking lot and the sound of their shoes scraping against the grainy tarmac fills the silence, along with the splat, splat, splat of rainwater dripping from the eavestroughs onto the roofs of cars parked below.

They get into Holden’s 1975 Chevy Nova and Bill reaches for the last cigarette from the packet in his pocket. He lights it with unsteady thumbs pressing hard against the spark wheel. Holden rolls the window down.

They sit there for a while. The air grows cooler the further the sun sinks beneath the skyline and a slight breeze passes through the car, taking with it the tobacco smoke and rustling Holden’s increasingly unkempt hair. Bill looks away, tries not to notice that he notices.

“Where are you staying tonight?” Holden asks as he finally turns the keys in the ignition and the engine sputters to a start, headlights flickering on.

If Bill didn’t know any better he would think it was a suggestion, but nonetheless it’s a question he’s been dreading all night. It brings him back to that empty living room and the blank walls and the gutted kitchen cabinets. The tightness in his chest he thought he escaped back at the bar returns and Nancy is in his ears again, questioning their marriage, questioning his commitment to his work, questioning whether he was fit to raise a child with the demands of his job in the first place. Her words poke holes in his composure that even alcohol can’t mask.

“I thought I might get a hotel room, but I should probably go by the house to get some things first,” Bill says. Before he can stop himself he adds, “Nancy basically took everything but the couch and my case files. Not sure I want to go back there.”

“Oh.” Holden frowns, but his expression still appears soft, achingly understanding. “Do you want me to go with you?”

After a moment of hesitation, Bill nods.

The house is cloaked in shadow when Holden pulls into the driveway. It looks more abandoned than it did in the daytime, hollow and empty even from its facade. From the looks of the windows, none of the lights are on inside, but the streetlamps cast mangled shapes of tree branches and telephone lines against the dull brown brick.

The feel of the house is different too, something about it slightly off, slightly askew. Bill was always relieved coming home after a seventy hour work week and dumping his briefcase by the door, but now the sight of it fills him with apprehension. Holden kills the ignition and Bill steps out of the car, tossing his cigarette onto the sidewalk and putting it out under his heel.

“Should I wait out here?” Holden asks.

Bill shakes his head, grabbing his keys from his jacket, and Holden follows him to the front door. When Bill gets it open, he flicks on the living room light and a single yellowy bulb that’s missing its fixture floods the space.

Holden looks around the room, eyes wandering over the bare walls and the lack of furniture until they land on the lumpy couch discarded in the middle of the floor. His face reveals little, except maybe an inkling of sympathy. Bill reaches behind him and closes the door. It clicks shut.

The first thing Bill thinks to do is wander into the kitchen and open the cabinet where the liquor used to be stored, padlocked away so Brian couldn't get into it. The padlock is gone, but Nancy left some of the liquor behind, mainly the type that Bill likes to drink; a bottle of whiskey she bought him for his birthday a year ago and a nearly empty bottle of rum. He opens another cabinet to look for a glass before realizing Nancy probably took those too. He unscrews the cap off the rum and indignantly takes a sip from the bottle instead, then dumps the whiskey out in the sink. He sets it on the counter.

Holden comes into the kitchen. His body language is stiff, hands firmly planted at his sides. He looks lost, like his surroundings have been decimated by a nuclear warhead and nothing recognizable has remained in the fallout. Holden was only here once—for that dinner party that happened what feels like years and years ago—but Bill can still imagine how jarring it is to witness the dissonance.

“Should you really be doing that?” Holden asks when he spots the bottle of liquor in Bill’s fist.

His eyes are so marred with concern it almost convinces Bill put the rum down, but not quite. Instead, he holds it out to him, an offering. Holden shakes his head. He falls into the space beside Bill, shoulder to shoulder, back pressed up against the counter.

“Bill, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

Bill shrugs. The rum burns his throat. He has no response to Holden and his obligatory apologies aimed at nothing and no one in particular. Bill wants to tell him to save his sympathy like he did down by the river in Atlanta, but it feels futile. Holden never listens to him anyways. It was his choice to bring him here, to open up the door and show him the wreckage.

“Tell me what you need to pack,” Holden says when he gets no further response.

Bill runs a hand over his face, rubbing at his tired eyes until black and blue spots cloud his vision. “Some clothes I guess. I should probably clear out the files in my office before Nancy decides to sell the house.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

Holden leaves the kitchen. A minute later, Bill hears him sliding open the closet door in the bedroom, clothes hangers rattling against each other as he shuffles through the remainder of Bill’s things. Bill takes another swig of rum and goes to his office, trying not to look at the closed bedroom door at the end of the hall, trying not to remember how Nancy had pulled Brian away from him, hand gripped around his thin forearm clad in flannel pyjamas.

Bill sets the bottle on the windowsill and clumsily gathers up the loose manila folders into a few boxes, then stacks them by the door. The crime scene photos Bill tore up yesterday are still in the trash bin, a harsh white rip cutting the image of a bloodied torso in two.

It feels like a waste, all that time spent on the road showing uninterested cops grainy projector slides of convicted killers and cut up bodies when he could have been home. All that time spent eating the same three meals at grimy diners when he could have eaten home-cooked food at the dining room table before Nancy took it away. All that time spent in stuffy airport terminals and claustrophobic precincts when he could have been there to pick Brian up from school, to play with him and his rubber ducks in the bathtub and push him on the swingset in the backyard. He could have been home on weekends, taken a day or two off in the summer, went to the beach, brought his wife on dinner dates with other couples, barbequed hot dogs on the grill and suffered through every monthly neighbourhood social just to make her happy.

So many missed opportunities cross his mind, but Bill knows if he looked any closer he would only see a whitewashed ideal. He thinks of morning banter in the Quantico cantine shared over styrofoam cups of coffee and cigarettes. He thinks of Wendy and her surefire insights and her warm smile if he was lucky enough to jostle one out of her. He thinks of their research—the interviews, the cases, the people they helped and the people they locked up—and knows it would be just as much of a waste to throw all of that away.

But if he wants to save his marriage, save his son, he has to. Right?

Bill reaches for the rum again and notices Holden standing in the doorway, a pair of shirts folded underneath his arm. Bill meets his eyes. He looks the same as he did this morning, worried yet bright-eyed, reserved yet sure of himself, somehow too old for his age but too young at the same time; a contradiction in a meticulously ironed suit and tie and a pair of dress shoes his father bought him.

Bill breaks his gaze to stare at the carpet at his feet. If he holds it any longer, his toe might finally inch over the line, past his apprehension and into the black before he can pull himself up from the ledge.

“Could you take these?” Bill asks, pointing to the boxes of case files with one hand, the other loosely gripping the bottle.

“Sure,” Holden says. “Do you want me to drop them off at your office tomorrow morning?”

“No, just take them. Shred them if you want.”

Holden looks confused. “Why? These are yours.”

Bill sighs, debating whether or not to tell him what Nancy said about transferring out of the BSU, but then Holden takes a step into the room, eyeing the ripped up photographs in the bin, and Bill can tell he’s already halfway to knowing.

“Nancy gave me an ultimatum.” Bill forces the words up his throat before they can snake their way back down. “She wants me to transfer within the bureau to a less demanding job so I can focus on our family . . . and our marriage I guess.”

“Transfer?” Holden looks at him blankly and says nothing more than that at first, only sets the stack of shirts on the nearest filing cabinet. He fiddles with the collar of the shirt placed on top, flattens and straightens it, then hesitantly asks, “Are you going to do it?”

Bill avoids his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”

“Yes,” Holden says. His voice borders the line between hurt and anger, but in that subdued way of his that only pains Bill more. “What about our research? Our cases? Not having you in Atlanta was enough of a pain in my ass.”

“Holden, please. I already went through this once with Nancy.”

“Well, what do you want me to say, Bill? That I want you to transfer out of the BSU?” Holden bites back. “I thought things would return to normal after we got back.”

“So did I.”

A pause. Holden falters and straightens.

“If you back out of the project, Ted is going to serve my head on a platter to the other directors.” Holden sighs and shakes his head, tongue pressed into his cheek. “This afternoon when he called me into his office he expressed concern about our team. He said that if our unit appears unstable it could reflect badly on the rest of the bureau.”

Bil narrows his eyes at Holden. “Ted said that?”

“If you were there today you would have heard it first hand.” Holden clenches his jaw, tendons in his throat visibly tensing. “If you leave the BSU, most of the blowback from the Atlanta case, within the FBI at least, is going to fall on me, you know. When the trial is over and a majority of the cases remain unresolved, people are going to look at me because of my profile.”

Despite their shared disappointment over the conclusion of the case, Bill has a hard time conjuring up any sympathy for Holden’s lack of foresight and self-control when he was the one advocating for his profile of the unsub before they could be sure.

“Holden, you did your job.”

“You keep saying that like it means something,” Holden scoffs.

Even if they handled this situation delicately, the wound would keep getting prodded at and ripped open somehow. Bill can feel blood starting to rush in to close the gaps between the torn flaps of skin.

“Cases end like this all the time,” Bill reasons. “People have their own agendas, Holden, you should realize that by now. You work for the fucking FBI. Act like it.”

Holden looks hurt, but that hurt only translates into more anger cracking through his carefully crafted exterior. “How does this not bother you?”

“It does bother me, but I know there’s nothing else we can do. It’s out of our hands.”

“Is it, Bill?”

“Jesus Christ, Holden. The investigation is over,” Bill snaps. “Stop trying to fix things to soothe your guilty conscience and take some goddamn responsibility for once in your life.”

Holden shifts. He blinks at Bill, worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth and trying to compose himself but failing. His eyes are glassy.

“Oh, and you would know about responsibility,” he says almost smugly, like he knows he has Bill backed into a corner. He motions towards the empty house. “Look around you, Bill. Is this what taking responsibility looks like?”

His words breathe and die in the silence. Bill has nothing to say because he knows Holden is right, no matter how much it hurts to admit that to himself. Bill looks at his knuckles going white around the neck of the bottle and tosses it onto the floor. It doesn’t shatter, but the last bit of rum spills out and seeps into the carpet. In the lowlight, it looks like a dried bloodstain.

Holden turns away from Bill and without another word picks up one of the boxes by the door.

“Holden, stop,” Bill says, but Holden ignores him.

He carries it to the living room, then comes back for the second one soon after. When he stoops down to lift it from the floor, Bill crosses the room and gently grabs his wrist to pull him away from it.

“Bill—”

“Holden, I said stop.”

Holden looks at him with eyes rimmed with red, tears welling in the corners in gooey pools. He curls his bottom lip inwards to stop it from trembling and he appears so much smaller than he really is, dwarfed by a vulnerability Bill has only ever seen one other time. It was there in that Vacaville hospital room where Bill found Holden bedridden and looking like death warmed over, tears drying on his stubbly cheeks, a yellowy mixture of stale sweat and vomit staining the front of his rumpled hospital gown. Holden had gripped the railing in the hallway as they left, just like Bill is gripping him now.

He feels a pang of guilt for everything and yet nothing in particular and loosens his hand around Holden’s wrist, but Holden holds him there, fingers pressing into his palm, blunt nails digging hash marks across his skin like Holy Wounds. Five of them.

Bill counts and Holden says nothing, just steadies himself. His breath swells in his chest, the rise and fall like a swinging pendulum, back and forth and back and forth, and then he tugs Bill closer, or maybe Bill leans into him of his own volition, but it happens in a blur, the alcohol burning in his stomach, and all Bill knows is the sudden heat as their lips meet, a clumsy kiss with teeth that turns bruising then desperate then slow.

Holden tastes sweet like Coca-Cola and bar mints, while Bill must taste like hard liquor and smell like ash. He presses Holden against the wall behind him with a muffled thump as Holden raises that same wounded hand to his cheek and pushes back against Bill in an effort to get closer, their noses bumping.

But then Bill feels tears that aren’t his own wet and warm against his cheeks and Holden is pulling away, his breath a shock against Bill’s face as he exhales hard, forcing them both back into reality. His shoulders shake and panic passes behind his eyes, lost and searching and borderline broken like he might fall to pieces at Bill’s feet. Before Atlanta, Wendy told Bill to watch for the signs, and this might be one of them.

“Holden,” Bill breathes and he reaches for him without knowing what else to do, but Holden is already halfway to the door.

Bill lets him go.

*

Holden stumbles down the front steps as soon as the door thrusts open and slams shut behind him, his legs threatening to give out from underneath him with every step. He makes his way down the sidewalk to the driveway.

His lungs are screaming.

They shrink smaller and smaller inside his ribcage until all the air has been sucked out of his chest and he can barely catch a full breath, confused thoughts tangling like a ball of rubber bands inside his skull, stretching and stretching until it feels like the bone will crack from the pressure pushing against it at all sides.

Holden scrambles for his keys in his jacket with unsteady fingers and unlocks the car after his fourth or fifth attempt to jam the key in and twist it the right way. Only when he gets inside and settles into the driver’s seat does he notice the tears dripping down his cheeks and his jaw to splat onto his button-down shirt. Shame burns in every part of his body, and the realization that Bill probably saw him crying makes it harder for him to stop.

He grips the steering wheel and screws his eyes shut, counts up to ten then counts down from ten over and over again until his breathing begins to even out and his hands stop shaking and he can finally ease his grip around the wheel. His palms sting from the friction of the leather when he drops them to his thighs.

The panic subsides, but tears keep pricking at his eyes. He wipes them away with the cuff of his jacket and stares out at the house, sees the sole light on in the living room.

He raises his thumb to prod at his lips where Bill scraped him with his teeth and he can still taste his favourite brand of cigarettes. It almost calms him. The tears slow and dissipate.

For a moment, Holden considers going back into the house, but then he thinks about Nancy and Brian and Bill and what he might be taking away from them. Vomit crawls up his throat as he realizes how selfish that would be, and when he looks at the house again, its preened bushes and homey, brown brick seem tainted by his hands, the place where Bill kissed him up against the wall marked and adulterated.

Holden turns the keys in the ignition and pulls out of the driveway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wendy: holden can u please fix things with bill or else we're fucked
> 
> holden: *makes things so much worse*
> 
> wendy: i don't know what i expected
> 
> i have a [mindhunter blog](https://fordtench.tumblr.com/) now


	4. sexual deviation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some quick notes before you read: 
> 
> 1\. Content warning for descriptions of rape, murder, and other gross stuff with regards to a case the team discusses. Because of this, I'm bumping the rating up to M.
> 
> 2\. If it makes anyone feel better, the serial killer in question is completely made up by yours truly and so are his crimes. I don't want to talk about real cases for the most part, and I thought this was the best way to get around it.
> 
> 3\. Thank you to everyone who's been reading thus far and enjoy!

The morning comes, slow and reluctant to rise as it breaks over the clouds, flooding the middle America generica below it. Sunshine muddied by the rain speckled window streams into the bathroom. It casts caustic patterns against the water stirring inside the toilet bowl as Bill clambers to his knees and retches into it. 

The remnants of alcohol that sat pooling in his stomach overnight pours out with bile and saliva and little else, yellow and gluey like pea soup. Bill coughs and sputters, his eyes watering as he finds his breath, then vomits again, finds his breath, then vomits one more time. It stings the stretch of his throat, unpleasantly warm and acidic like boiling hot lemon tea you drink when you have the flu.

He leans against the porcelain. It burns cold against his sweat-dampened forehead like the gelid shame that finds a home in his hollowed-out stomach, swelling in between the syncopated pulses of pain around his temples as his head throbs, too heavy for his neck to hold up. 

Bill had hoped when the brown liquor ran clear in his veins he might gain some clarity, but it never comes. A spectre of Holden shifts underneath him, the lingering pieces of his presence slipping between his fingers, there but not really there at all. Bill senses the pull of his mouth again, his breath balmy and sweet, the wet slip of tears on his cheeks as Bill palmed his face. Holden fades in and out and in again. No matter where he is, the thought of him is constant, never too far out of reach before Bill draws him back and knows his taste like he never left, even if he kissed him through the thick of an alcoholic haze. Overwhelming, confusing, too much. 

Another wave of nausea passes through Bill’s insides as he wipes sweat and sick from his mouth with the front of his undershirt and stands. He braces himself against the leaky sink. His back is stiff from sleeping on that old, lumpy couch he retired to after Holden left, too drunk to find a hotel room, held together only by booze and a self-preservation that kept urging him to sleep. A knot twists in his side where a jagged spring dug into him underneath the pukey green fabric. 

Bill sighs.

As Holden intermittently fades out, Nancy fades in, and Bill wonders if he should pull himself together and call her if only to ask about Brian. She took the phone from his office, which gives him a good excuse not to bother, but his reluctance is less surface-level than that. He thinks if he heard her voice after what happened with Holden, he might finally break down, give her another reason to leave, sear another mark of guilt onto his already ripped and torn skin. 

What would he tell her, if anything at all? Coming home to an empty house read like a pseudo-divorce, but kissing Holden seems like infidelity anyways, at least in the morning without a bottle of rum in his hand. Last night, in his whiskey addled mind, Bill was willing to do what Nancy wanted, put his work aside to focus on their family, but sober he’s not sure what that would change. 

He tries to convince himself what happened with Holden similarily changes nothing as he fiddles with the wedding ring on his finger, picturing Nancy’s face but only seeing the vitriol in her eyes as they argued in front of that unfamiliar house that was supposed to be their new home. After a moment, her face morphs into Holden, shaded in the corner of the office, back pressed against the wall. Bill sees his lip tremble. It looks like if he were to open his mouth, he would beg Bill to stay. 

Bill should have returned the favour.

Maybe Holden is the one he should call, just to check in after he ran out like that, but Bill isn’t ready to hear his voice either. 

Ignoring the sick churning in his stomach, Bill exits the bathroom. He rifles around in the hallway closet until he finds a towel and some spare toiletries Nancy left behind in one of his travel bags. He showers the stink off himself and scrubs his skin until it’s raw to the touch. As it flushes pink in the steam, he tries not to think about Holden’s kiss-swollen mouth or his bleary eyes, veins squiggly in the corners like reddened lightning bolts. 

He shuts the water off, gets out, and as he stands in the hallway it seems like something has shifted, taken up space in the far-reaching corners of the empty rooms. This house was his and Nancy’s for so long, but now Holden has written over it in his own handwriting, scratched his name into the plaster walls. If this were a crime scene—and it nearly resembles one—Bill could map his whereabouts; the imprint of his shoes on the carpet, the shirts symmetrically folded by his hands on the bedsheet-less mattress, the boxes of files he set by the front door. 

Nancy had gutted this home and Holden had tried to fill in the empty cracks. Bill should have let him instead of giving in and telling him the truth, thoughtlessly thinking he might accept it instead of trying to talk him down, putting him in a vice. 

Every time Bill guides Holden one way, he moves in the opposite direction, always somewhere Bill refuses to follow whether by principle or out of fear that Holden could get himself hurt. Holden has always needed someone above the deep end to pull him out, keep him from drowning himself in water he thought he could tread. This time, however, Bill is the one pulling Holden under the break of the waves, goading him to swallow the sea with him. 

Bill gets dressed. He hesitates for the briefest moment as his fingers brush one of the shirts Holden folded but never got the chance to pack away. Instead, Bill grabs one still hanging up in the closet; light pink, horribly wrinkled. As he attempts to smooth down the creases, it dawns on him that yesterday morning the shirt he changed into was pressed flat, the ironing board abandoned in the middle of the kitchen while Holden ran the shower. He shakes his head at himself for not realizing earlier, doubt and uncertainty and something warm and unbearable swelling his insides. 

A clean undershirt and boxers, trousers, socks, tie, belt, shoes, jacket. By the end, Bill almost looks like himself again, the tired look in his eyes and the lack of sleep bruising the skin underneath as much a part of his cigarettes-and-coffee-for-breakfast persona as his FBI grade suit. His hangover is a new addition, on a Wednesday morning no less. 

Bill takes a taxi to his car which is still waiting for him in the parking lot of the bar, now utterly deserted. Aside from a few puddles that linger behind in muddy potholes, the rain has evaporated from the pavement. The sun tears its way through the overcast sky, the street engulfed in light then shade then light again as it peek-a-boos in and out. It looks like it might turn out to be a nice day, but Bill feels no better for it. 

He unlocks his car, gets in, and drives.

*

8:35 AM. 

Holden lies in bed.

On any other day, he would be up and dressed by now, but he keeps staring at the ceiling, eyes tracing the stucco. He slept a few hours after coming home and chewing another Valium, then woke up in the middle of the night, sat in front of the TV watching infomercials until he felt tired again, then slept for a couple hours more.

He has a hard time discerning which emotions remain from his panic attack and which emotions Bill personally left him to grapple with. Confusion taints every feeling, confusion for why Bill kissed him, why Holden kissed him back, why he ran out after it happened oblivious to his own tears. Maybe it was too many unexpected things all at once—the threat of Bill leaving the BSU, their argument, Bill backing him into a corner, literally and figuratively—or maybe it was that acute feeling of vulnerability Wendy mentioned the first time he told her about Vacaville, and Kemper.

The blinds clack unpleasantly against the window as the breeze streams in. Birds chirp. A car alarm goes off in the parking lot below his apartment complex. Holden is still and time ticks on. His back sticks to the sheets underneath him, slick with sweat. 

He needs to get ready for work, but he stays put, overthinking things, trying to push them from his mind, then overthinking them again. All he can hope to do is pretend nothing happened, rush headfirst back into his work to keep himself from falling apart and disrupting Ted’s vision of a squeaky clean BSU and a solidified task force of eager-to-please agents, always the first call, always on the job, like some bullshit daytime TV police procedural.

If Bill leaves, Ted is going to have that rose-tinted image tainted and Holden will have to deal with the aftermath all on his own. Maybe Ted will bring in one of his bureaucrat cronies to keep an eye on him like Bill was supposed to. The thought of it makes him want to request a transfer himself, but he would never abandon their research like that.

All in all, everything is a step away from falling apart and Holden has no idea which direction he should be moving in. A toe out of turn and his foot could fall on a landmine and the BSU could shatter to pieces.

Holden tentatively decides to go in, if only to bury his nose in a stack of case files to distract himself, just as the phone on his bedside table rings. He sits up, bedsheets peeling off his legs, and hesitantly lifts the handset to his ear. 

“Hello?”

“Holden, are you coming in today?” comes Wendy’s voice on the other end of the line.

Holden breathes a sigh of relief. “Yeah, I was just—” He glances at the clock and has to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself from swearing. “Sorry, I’m running late. I’m feeling under the weather this morning.”

“Oh,” Wendy says. She pauses. “Are you still okay to come into work? We need to discuss our schedule now that you and Bill are back.” 

Holden swallows down the lump in his throat. Their research has been stagnating since the BSU was officially assigned to the Atlanta case. Ted must be pressuring Wendy to get them back on track, especially now that he wants the project to be completed in two years, not four like they originally planned. 

“Yes, I can come in,” Holden says, acknowledging the constraints of their time frame. “Is Bill there?”

“He got here about fifteen minutes ago.” 

Holden holds his breath to hide the hitch in his throat as he thinks about seeing Bill for the first time since last night. At least now he knows Bill is taking his time with his decision, not packing up at the earliest opportunity or avoiding work altogether like he did yesterday. Holden considers that maybe he overreacted when Bill told him, but he had looked so lost in that moment, so close to taking the first possible out. 

As Holden remembers his desperation, he backtracks. Maybe Bill _has _made up his mind and is just waiting for the right time to request a transfer, waiting to break the news to the rest of the BSU. 

“Do you need to speak with him?” Wendy asks. 

“No,” Holden insists a little too quickly, a little too forced, accidentally revealing his apprehension. He winces, wondering when he got so awful at hiding his vulnerabilities. He tries to set himself straight. “Give me an hour?”

He can hear papers rustling on the other end. Wendy clicks her tongue. “Alright, see you then.” 

She hangs up and the line goes dead. Holden sits there for a moment on the edge of his mattress, listening to the drone of the dial tone, anxiety flooding his lungs, thick and gloopy and hard to ignore. He sets the phone back down on the receiver and stands.

* 

Bill sits at his desk, coffee in hand, picking away at a buttered bagel he got from the canteen. He goes through the paperwork he left on his desk to deal with when he got back from Atlanta, skimming the dense and pedantic bureau jargon, signing on the dotted line. 

By the time the stack is an inch shorter and his coffee is going cold, Wendy is knocking on his office door. She opens it a crack before he can answer, pokes her head in and says, “Conference room. Five minutes.” 

“Is Holden here now?” Bill asks, looking up at her from beneath his black-rimmed reading glasses.

Wendy nods curtly, then disappears back into the hallway leaving the door open behind her. Her heels click against the linoleum floor tiles until the sound of her steps fade into the background chatter of the main office, phones ringing, spare staff shuffling around, mail being passed out. Bill sets the file he was reading down in front of him then rifles in his desk for cigarettes, itching out of his skin. He finds a package half crushed against the back of the drawer. He lights up and the tobacco tastes stale, but it soothes his nerves. 

He looks at the clock. The minute hand has moved an inch, so he stands, throws his glasses onto his desk and inhales slowly around his cigarette. His heart palpitates in his chest. He blows smoke rings to take his mind off seeing Holden again, but it does little to quell his anxiety. 

Eventually, Bill drags himself from his quiet corner office on the opposite side of the basement and into the hallway. It seems narrower than usual, claustrophobic and oppressive, and he dreads every step that brings him closer to the main office. 

When he enters the conference room, however, he finds Holden’s usual seat empty.

Wendy is standing at the head of the table near the bulletin board, a manila folder clutched in her hand. Her expression reveals little but mild annoyance, probably at having to wait for everyone else to trickle in. Gregg is sitting across from her and he smiles politely as Bill wordlessly takes a seat. He glances at the unoccupied chair beside Gregg and flicks ash off his cigarette, glad at the very least that he could sit down and settle in before Holden. A weak hand, but he holds the cards nonetheless. 

Less than thirty seconds pass before the door opens and Holden walks in. 

He looks no different than he does any other day; white button-down, grey slacks, tie plainly decorated with diagonal stripes and his hair styled off his forehead with military precision. Bill catches his face for a second before inconspicuously avoiding his stare, but Holden appears just as bright-eyed and determined as always. 

“Did you start without me?” he asks jokingly, then grabs a seat.

He sounds like his old self, before Atlanta, before the panic attacks, even before Road School when Bill first met him and spotted that blue flame shooting out of his ass. Holden had bounced back like this after Vacaville, immediately throwing himself into work without as much as a complaint.

Maybe the episode he had after Bill kissed him was a convenient excuse to walk out, avoid going through the hassle of rejection, but Bill realizes how unlike Holden that would be, how needlessly cruel. Holden has always been careless and misguided when he thought his recklessness would help, but the wreckage he leaves behind in his wake is the same, no matter his intentions. 

Bill tries to stifle his hurt. His memories are hazy and soft and out of focus like an old, grainy film reel, but he remembers Holden leaning into him, holding his hand, pressing it to his cheek. He also remembers Holden pulling away, driving off, leaving him in that empty house to relive the isolation over and over. 

Bill risks another glance as Holden does the same. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second. All Bill can do is clench his jaw and desperately keep himself from faltering, while Holden is blank, seemingly unaffected. Any emotions Bill could discern from his expression would be a projection, so he looks away, pain turning to frustration turning to sadness turning to anger. 

Wendy clears her throat. 

“I talked to Ted this morning,” she says, crossing her arms, commanding the attention of the room in one fell swoop. “He reiterated that since Bill and Holden have returned, we can get back to business as usual, starting with our schedule for the subsequent several months, up until the new year.” She points to the bulletin board lined with the monochrome faces of possible subjects, staring straight ahead, unblinking. “I suggest we focus on sexual sadists and lust murderers. No more Mansons, at least until we can knock several more straightforward candidates off our list.” 

“Why pigeonhole ourselves?” Holden chimes in. “We should be looking at more than one type of killer.” 

“I agree, but this way we can work our way through, ease our analysis, eventually getting to the outliers,” Wendy explains. “If we want to complete our study in the timeline Ted has requested we have to be far more systematic in how we approach our research.” She pauses, looking between Bill and Holden in no way discreetly, likely not trying to be. “No more distractions.” 

Bill exhales sharply, blowing smoke through tightly pursed lips. “Look, I never asked to be put on the Atlanta case. Holden did.”

Holden glares at him, finally some emotion passing across his eyes. His face tenses, jaw bone prominent as he briefly presses his molars together. Then he looks at Wendy, refocusing his attention and pointedly ignoring Bill. “Who did you have in mind?” 

Wendy motions for Gregg to take the lead. Gregg, never one to handle tension in the room well, looks visibly uncomfortable as he stumbles and flips through the file in front of him. 

“Well,” he begins, “while you and Bill were in Georgia, Wendy and I examined the cases of potential interviewees and narrowed it down by motive and M.O. Then I called around to the prisons to see who was most eager to talk to us so we could easily pencil them in when you got back.” 

Gregg slides the folder over to Holden who picks it up and examines the first page carefully. 

“This is great, Gregg,” he says, soft-spoken and complementary.

He sounds like he always does while trying to flatter someone, usher them over to his side, but he lacks the charm to pull off any proper schmoozing so it always ends up coming out clumsy and painfully transparent. Bill has to stop himself from rolling his eyes. 

Holden glances through the rest of the file. “George Putt, Bobby White, John Meadows,” he reads out loud, “Louis Hughes, Eddie Carroll.” He puts the document down onto the table, taps the latter name typed out in Second Coming font. “I read his case file yesterday. He really wants to talk to us?”

Gregg nods. Wendy opens the manila folder in her hand, rifles through her papers, then pulls one out.

“Eddie Carroll raped and killed five women in the St. Louis area, all within the span of about three months,” she reads, scanning the page. “The victim pool was varied, the youngest aged fifteen and the oldest seventy-one. His M.O. was inconsistent as well. He attacked his first three victims at night, in empty parking lots, parks, and on the street, but in the case of his last two victims, he broke into their houses. All women were raped, then strangled with their own clothing or beaten to death, seemingly at random.”

The room is quiet when Wendy finishes, somehow even more oppressive than it was when Bill walked in. Holden looks expectantly at him and Bill feels like he might disintegrate under his disaffected eyes. He takes another drag of his cigarette, delaying his read of the subject until he can hastily cobble his thoughts together. 

“A disorganized spree killer then,” he states somewhat dismissively, hoping that his authority is enough to convince Wendy and Holden that he went through the case file yesterday like he should have, instead of wallowing in the bottom of a glass of whiskey. “It sounds like sloppy work.”

He wants to ease the process as much as necessary so they can all agree and retreat back to their separate offices as soon as possible. Bill wants to suture his wounds in private before he bleeds through his clothes and Holden finally sees the aftermath of last night.

Wendy turns to Holden, who looks unsure for a moment, then he slips into his usual affectation. 

“Not necessarily,” he says in that know-it-all way of his, a contrarian on his way to impress. “It seems like he put thought into the killings, if not exactly who and where.”

“How so?” Wendy asks.

“Well, the bodies were all staged in the same way,” Holden explains. “Carroll seemed organized enough to remain at the crime scene to ritualistically pose the bodies and not get caught, unlike other spree killers like Berkowitz who fled immediately after murdering their victims.”

Bill remains unconvinced, if not annoyed. “Holden, I think you’re stretching definitions,” he says. He shifts in his seat, fingers tensing around his nubby cigarette. “The way he went about the killings was sporadic and unpredictable. Victims of different ages, different locations, different methods of execution.”

Holden shakes his head. “No, Bill, think about it,” he insists. He leans forward, hands pressed onto the table, that fixed look in his eyes appearing like it always does when he gets going on a case. Bill fidgets when he hears his name in his mouth. “The victims were all laid face down and redressed, hands tucked behind their backs. Some of them had their nylon stockings tied around their necks or stuffed down their throats post-mortem. This has to be a reflection of some deep-seated sexual deviation, like bondage or exhibitionism, maybe even humiliation.”

Holden gesticulates as he works his way through his explanation and all Bill can think about is how his fingernails had dug into his palm. He looked for the marks this morning but they had already faded.

“The staging is consistent,” Holden continues, growing more and more sure-fire in his analysis. “Maybe this is where the sexual gratification comes from, not the killing itself. So it’s possible that the specific M.O. matters less here than in most cases.”

Bill blinks at Holden as he finishes his point, not sure whether to agree with him—because he is right, no matter how frustrating it is to admit—or walk out of the room to avoid acknowledging him altogether.

Bill should have known this was how it was going to play out the moment he backed Holden against the wall, hand around his wrist. Of course it would end with Holden pretending like nothing happened and Bill being pushed out of another place that felt like home, neither of them admitting that last night meant anything at all.

But it did.

And Bill is furious at himself for even thinking so when he has a wife and son somewhere on the other side of the city. He could be calling them, begging them to come home, but instead he’s wasting his time listening to Holden talk pedantically about categorization.

The tension is awkwardly disrupted when Gregg speaks up. “Holden does have a point.”

“I also agree, to an extent,” Wendy adds. “Perhaps more killers are focused on the process of killing, the hunt so to speak, while others revel in the act after the fact.”

With that, Holden appears borderline pleased with himself, while Wendy looks like a hundred different possibilities are running through her mind and Bill just looks tired, fed up with this back-and-forth. He sighs, slumps back in his chair and runs a hand down his face.

“Is there a problem?” Wendy asks, staring Bill down.

Bill shakes his head, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray with a little more force than necessary. “I just don’t understand why we have to waste our time bickering about terminology before we’ve even talked to the guy.”

“Bill, these classifications determine how we carry out our interviews,” she says. “You of all people should understand that.”

Exasperated—more with Holden than anything relating to the project—Bill stands, chair legs squealing unpleasantly against the floor, grating in his ears. He needs another cigarette, and an excuse to get out of here. 

Wendy narrows her eyes at him. “Where are you going?” 

“A lecture is about the last thing I need right now,” Bill says. 

And then Holden is speaking matter-of-factly, stirring the anger in his stomach. “Like Wendy said, the accuracy of our profiles depends on these interviews, which depend on the science and the methodology. Bill, in Atlanta—”

Bill cuts him off. “Sure, your profile is what helped us catch Williams in Atlanta, not staking out a river in a hot car for seven fucking days straight,” he says before he can stop himself or even consider how this might look to Wendy and Gregg. “And since when were you sure of the science, Holden? You keep telling me you doubt we even got the right guy, that your profile was a crock of shit.”

His words linger and fade as the room grows quieter and the air grows heavier with each passing second. Holden opens his mouth to speak, then closes it and looks away, jaw set. Gregg avoids Bill as well, sitting back in his chair, grimacing, but Wendy stares straight ahead, searching for an explanation, taken aback but unrelenting.

Bill leaves.

He makes a bee-line to his office, Wendy following close behind. Before the door to his office can slam shut she pushes her way inside, stands in front of his desk as he finds his pack of his cigarettes again. She crosses her arms over her chest, lines on her face deepening as she frowns. 

“What the hell was that?” she asks. “Bill, whatever you're going through, whatever happened between you and Holden in Atlanta, you leave it behind when you come to work.” Her anger breaks through, somehow still calm yet scathing. “I left Boston to conduct this research project, not run around wrangling my colleagues all day.” 

Bill shrugs, cigarette hanging precariously from his mouth. “That was your choice.”

“Yes, it was,” Wendy continues, “because I believed in what you and Holden were doing. What you _ had _ was something special. I thought it might go somewhere.” The disappointment in her voice is difficult to digest. “Now, how can I even trust you to cooperate during interviews when you have trouble discussing categorization without butting heads?” 

Her words cause Bill's anger to dissipate, and in its place that same bred-in-the-bone ache returns, shifts his organs one inch to the right. Bill leans up against the edge of his desk, head hung. He inhales around his cigarette, holds the smoke in his lungs until it burns, then exhales. 

“I’ll talk to him about it.” 

“And say what?” Wendy asks, her voice softening with concern. “Holden is your partner, Bill, not your emotional punching bag.” 

“I know that."

“Do you? He told me how you acted towards him about his panic disorder.” She shakes her head. “Show some professionalism. Better yet, show some empathy.” 

Bill lets out a half-laugh to mask his hurt, then blows more smoke. “Great, so now I get that speech. I thought that was reserved for Holden and his outbursts.”

“You hang every mistake over his head like it absolves you from your own,” Wendy scoffs. Then something in her expression shifts as she says, “What happened between you two?” A pause. “No, forget it, what is going on with you?” 

“I—” Bill starts, then stops himself, unsure of what to say. 

He breathes in, then out, thinks about Holden and his mouth and his hand on his cheek, thinks about Nancy and her tears and Brian being pulled from his reach. He tries to decide which secrets to divulge in order to give himself some room to breathe, to back away from all of this. Maybe he can separate himself by finally saying it out loud, letting the words tear themselves from their hiding spots in his head and find somewhere else to live.

“Nancy left me,” he reveals. “I came home from Atlanta and all that was left in the house was our couch and some of my things. She took Brian, moved to some neighbourhood across the city. Never even called to tell me what was going on.”

Shock passes over Wendy’s face. She immediately appears apologetic. 

“Bill, I’m so sorry,” she says. “Does Holden know?”

Bill sighs. “He does, but I’m starting to think I shouldn’t have told him.”

“Why?”

Bill takes another drag of his cigarette, trying to delay the inevitable, avoid the same spiel he gave Holden. “I talked to Nancy yesterday. She wants me to transfer out of the BSU so I can focus on our marriage and our son.” 

“Are you going to do it?” Wendy asks, expression tensed, and Bill can tell she’s hiding her disapproval. 

“I don’t know yet, but I was with Holden last night. I'd been drinking and I said some things without thinking them through. He thinks I'm leaving.”

“Well, talk to him,” Wendy says, eyebrows cinched. “Tell him you’re not.” 

Bill shakes his head. “I haven’t decided yet. I can’t just take it back and then go through with it.” The ache intensifies. “I couldn’t do that to him.”

Wendy nods. She crosses the room and leans up against the desk, regarding Bill carefully. Their shoulders brush and it’s a comfort, but it also reminds him of Holden, standing beside each other in the kitchen last night, eyes searching in the dark. Bill wishes he could linger in that moment, the slow, languid contentment of sharing space before everything fell apart. Bill was laid bare, and Holden was thumbing at his pieces, trying to figure out how to put him back together but too fractured himself to know how. 

Wendy smiles, small, forgiving, almost reassuring. “I understand.” 

*

Holden gathers up the files strewn about the table into a neat stack, trying to appear busy. He should head back to his office, but he fears he might be able to hear Bill and Wendy arguing through the thin cubicle walls on his way. Gregg is similarly confused about what happened, still in his seat, arms stiff at his sides. 

“Is Bill alright?” he eventually asks Holden, hesitant and unsure.

The question stirs up a hurt that had been sitting dormant since Holden came into work that morning. He was determined to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary, but having someone on the outside point out how different things seem chips away at his resolve. Holden pushes away his unease, stares at the bulletin board. The faces stare back at him. 

“Bill is fine,” Holden says, partly to convince Gregg to drop the subject and partly to convince himself that he is, in fact, okay. Otherwise, he might be in that office instead of Wendy, arguing with him about something completely different. “Atlanta was difficult for everyone, but things should be back to normal soon.” 

Depending on whether or not Bill leaves, however, that could be a lie. Holden conveniently leaves that out, pushes the thought of it away until he has to accept it. 

“Right,” Gregg says. “You know, I know it might not seem like it, but a lot of people are grateful for the work you did on that case. “ 

Holden turns to Gregg but says nothing. Now that the BSU had been barred from any further involvement in the investigation, Holden wishes everyone would either forget Atlanta ever happened or at least stop bringing it up, himself included. 

“My wife for one,” Gregg continues. “She was keeping up with the news, praying every night, never letting our kids out of her sight. I kept telling her that something like that couldn’t happen here but she wouldn’t listen to me.” 

Absentmindedly, Holden thinks about Brian, about the little boy he tied to that cross. He wonders if it was in the newspapers at all, if a small town could be tainted with the death of one child in the same way a metropolis like Atlanta was with the death of twenty-five. Maybe for some people, it paints their every day lives a different colour, but for others, it barely registers as a footnote at the end of a page, written in faded black ink. Holden lingers somewhere in the middle on both ends, caught in-between martyrdom and believing he is rightfully to blame. 

“But it could happen here,” Holden says flatly, his voice lowered. “It could happen anywhere.”

Gregg nods. “Well, I know. I think she knew that too.”

Holden thinks about Nancy. 

Yesterday, as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car trying to slow his breath and slow his tears, he knew it was a mistake to follow Bill into that house. He should have called him a taxi instead of taking the opportunity to drive him home, watch him fade into a pinprick on the horizon from the parking lot of the bar. Bill was drunk, vulnerable, alone, ready to grab hold of any semblance of intimacy he could find. Holden was merely there. He was convenient, nothing more. Bill would never have let him that close otherwise, let alone kissed him without three whiskeys and three beers and however much rum he had in his system. 

What would Nancy think of him now? How would Brian feel if he knew that Holden, the stranger who sat on the living room floor with him and played with his Lincoln Logs, had put his father in that position? He would never be forgiven, not for Atlanta and certainly not for this.

“You said you have kids?” Holden says to Gregg, blinking away the sting in his eyes. It feels like self-harm asking a question like that, placing himself somewhere he can feel the hurt more.

“Twins actually,” Gregg replies. “Two girls, both eight years old. I think they would like you.”

Holden knits his eyebrows together. “Why?”

“Well, you know, Special Agent Holden Ford, catching the bad guys. Your name was in the paper the other day,” Gregg says. “Kids love that kind of thing.” 

Holden feels sick. He turns away, walks over to the bulletin board, traces the paper faces with his eyes, black and white, white and black, each photograph made up of inky dots like a pointillist painting. If Holden looked any closer he would see nothing at all, a monochrome smudge, bare, blank, empty, nothing just like him. 

Bill, Gregg, maybe even Wendy all have something outside of this, but for Holden, this is all he has to his name; boxes of case files and microphones and tape machines, crime scene photographs, a book signed by Charles Manson. Maybe it should stay that way. Maybe he should stop pushing past barriers and realize they surround him for a reason. Maybe he should let Bill go. 

Bill needs his family, not his rundown FBI partner who can barely hold himself together long enough to get through an investigation, let alone deal with the guilt that lingers in the aftermath. 

Holden reaches over and unpins the photograph of Eddie Carroll from the bulletin board. White male, about twenty-five years old, blue-collar. He looks haggard and as thin as a broomstick, skin tan and leathery, tufts of greasy blond hair sticking out from behind his ears. The faintest ghost of a smile twists his wormy lips as his head pokes out above the county jail sign. Holden slides the photograph across the table to Gregg who regards it with apprehension. 

“He’s incarcerated in the State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Missouri,” Holden says. “Are you in or are you out?”

Gregg looks surprised, eyebrows raised towards his hairline. “Oh, uh, in,” he says, then he straightens, regaining his composure. “In, for sure.” 

Holden nods. “I’ll make some calls.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *takes one criminology course*
> 
> me: here is some serial killer techno-jargon i'm not qualified by any means to discuss and probably makes zero sense
> 
> the bsu has two collective brain cells and they all belong to wendy but i have a collective zero
> 
> tell me what you think!
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://fordtench.tumblr.com/)


	5. confessional

Bill runs out of cigarettes halfway through the afternoon. The rhythmic pull of smoke curling between his teeth levels him, a cancerous distraction from what happened that morning when yet another distraction turned into yet another mistake.

He mulls over cases he has already mulled over ten or twenty times. The BTK files sit in the middle of his desk, taunting him, just as impenetrable as they were when Bill was first asked to look into the case. The line of communication has been dead since 1978, not a peep since the perp sent his last letter to a local television station. Bill looks over his photocopy, inky and unclear, and taps out the lyrics of _O Death_ against his thigh. He wonders what they mean if anything at all.

The letter is rife with spelling errors, like Son of Sam or Zodiac’s correspondence with the press. They seem too obvious not to have been deliberate, mismatched letters and apostrophes out of place purposefully there to tease and conjure up images of a scribbling mad man when in reality the perp has just read too many pulp novels or seen _The Exorcist_ one too many times.

Each red herring and dead-end just fuels Bill's frustration, so he sets the files back in the box and the box back down on the floor. He gulps down the rest of his coffee.

The machine in the hallway dispenses a liquid close to mud, so Bill takes the elevator up to the cafeteria, eager to take advantage of any opportunity that gets him away from the dreariness of the windowless basement or the oppressive mood looming over the entire office.

Bill feels a bit lighter as soon as he spots the courtyard through the wide windows. Outside, the sun beats down on the gardens, the sky coloured baby blanket blue, clouds wispy across the horizon like pulled cotton.

Bill buys a pack of cigarettes from the kiosk and a coffee from the canteen, then sits down at an empty table by the window. He blows the steam from his cup and adds as many sugars as his sweet-tooth can handle, watching as the cafeteria swarms with agents and employees, their chatter a constant drone in his ears that washes out his own thoughts.

As Bill lights a cigarette, he absentmindedly glances across the room to the table where he and Holden sat the first time they had met. A group of agents, not much younger than Holden, have taken their place, talking over lunch trays, hair combed in the same direction, clearance badges swinging on dry-cleaned lapels.

Before Bill met Holden, he had been falling into the lull of the everyday demands of his job, going through the motions of Road School and consultations without giving much thought to how his work could alter police procedures or push the status quo within the FBI. Then Holden appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, a hostage negotiator turned recruitment instructor who reignited his interest in the BSU with his ambition and naivety and idealism. He had reminded Bill why he joined the FBI in the first place.

Laughter cuts through the cafeteria as the group of unseasoned agents continue their conversation, and Bill realizes how worn-down Holden has become with several low-level homicide cases under his belt and the outcome of a high profile investigation weighing heavily on his shoulders.

Holden was never as outwardly enthusiastic as many of the blue flamers Bill crossed paths with before him, but his do-gooder attitude always seemed more genuine, less about climbing the ranks and more about making a difference. His overwhelming sincerity and unconventional way of doing things irritated most people, especially Shepard. But it never irritated Bill, at least not initially.

It was a lot simpler back then. Maybe not with Nancy and Brian at home, but with Holden, sitting across from him at that table while Bill chain-smoked and barely bit back his smile. Bill was so enamoured with that version of his partner, his back pin-straight, fixing his tie, all the food groups represented on his lunch tray. That Holden was untainted by Atlanta or Kemper or his stint in Vacaville, before he became emboldened and reckless, egged on by his anxieties and his guilt.

This morning, Bill had assumed that Holden was back to normal, but even his normal has shifted since they met on a Thursday afternoon in 1977. Tired, stretched thin and tearing, showing holes, but so good at acting like more than a few threads pulled taut are holding him together, maybe even enough to convince himself of it.

In his frustration and dejection, Bill had failed to see the signs, but talking to Wendy had left him with a bit more clarity, or at least a reason to treat the situation more delicately.

Bill stands, trying to shake the sentimentality off as splintered and listless memories flood him. Swarming memories of flickering NO VACANCY signs and beers shared by a motel pool, the sleepy pull of a grainy projector in a darkened police station, hours spent on a highway that seems to stretch and stretch for eons unbroken, static fizzing through the radio as they lose the signal of a local station passing from one town to the next. Holden, who usually chooses the music, dozes off in the passenger seat, so Bill just listens to white noise and lets him sleep.

These memories are faint and half-forgotten in their details but unbearable in their emotions, leaving Bill angry and apologetic for everything that has twisted and mangled their relationship since.

It was easier before Bill knew the extent of Holden’s ambitions, before he made mistake after mistake attempting to realize them. Bill always tried to keep Holden beside him, keep him close and in-reach, but Holden pushed and pulled and they had both lost their balance at some point, nosediving through the void opening up beneath their feet.

Bill is crossing the cafeteria, heading back towards the elevators, when he sees Holden through the double doors that lead outside. He sits on a bench facing out towards the firing ranges, posture stiff, his tie atwist in the breeze. He straightens it and looks ahead.

Bill goes to him.

*

Bill finds him.

Somehow he always finds him, but never in the way Holden expects, never at the time when he needs him.

Bill had been absent from the main office since he walked out of their meeting that morning, undoubtedly licking his wounds on the opposite end of the basement. As a result, Holden had spent most of his afternoon arranging the interview with Eddie Carroll, making phone calls to the precinct and getting the proper paperwork sent over. He was eager to grab hold of the opportunity, partly out of spite and partly out of necessity to keep their research moving.

It had been a welcome relief to focus on something other than his interpersonal relationships or his place within the BSU with the threat of Bill leaving. It felt productive to tackle something much more tangible, break from the chaos to find routine again in organizing the files for their trip or packing away his recording equipment. He sorted through blank tapes in a filing cabinet and as he felt the weight of one in his palm, the weight of everything but the research potential of their next interview sloughed off his shoulders.

However, every so often he would pause, sink his teeth into his bottom lip where Bill had kissed him. He would press his thumb against his pulse point on his wrist until he felt it thump and, in time, could hear the sound of his back colliding with the wall that Bill pushed him against. His heart would sink to his stomach before he turned his attention back to his work.

Now, Holden sits on a bench in the courtyard, watching the activity of other agents as they move about the gardens with lunch trays and cups of coffee, enjoying the sunny weather after two days of rain. Holden came here to clear his head and devise a concrete plan for the interview, but Bill’s approach quickly shatters any hope he has of finding clarity in between the preened bushes and concrete picnic tables.

Holden smells his usual brand of cigarettes before he sees his face, and then his voice cuts through the ambience, just as warm and gruff as the smoke clouding his mouth.

“Can I sit?”

Holden turns towards him, expression purposefully unchanging. Bill is wearing one of those eye-sore ties of his—the one with the purple and green and blue swirls that muddle together like a broken kaleidoscope—and the first button is undone on the pink dress shirt Holden has admittedly always liked. In the sunshine, as opposed to the skewing lights of the basement, Holden can see how hungover Bill is, but it also looks like he got more than five hours of sleep for once. His eyes are less glazed over and more aler. He appears slightly dishevelled as always, but comparably clean cut to how worn to the bone and beaten down he appeared last night at the bar. Holden is almost relieved until he reminds himself that he should be upset with him still, even if the only emotion he can conjure up is irritation.

“What do you want, Bill?” Holden asks, not meeting his eyes but the cigarette clenched between Bill’s teeth, watching as his lips purse as he takes another drag. He feels the warmth that Bill must feel in his lungs stir in his stomach.

“I want to sit,” Bill says with a characteristic snark that eases Holden’s anxiety. “Is that alright with you, Princess?”

Holden opens his mouth to speak, but closes it when he feels his ears going red with embarrassment. All he wants to do is lock himself in his office and stick his nose in another stack of paperwork, anything to avoid going through yet another conversation with Bill that goes nowhere and resolves nothing.

Bill leaves as much space between them as possible as he sits down on the other side of the bench. Holden stares at the slats in the wood and wonders whether Bill came here to disrupt his thought process or if he actually has something useful to say. If Holden was as naive as he once was he might expect an apology from him, but Bill never apologizes for anything and Holden would never reveal he was hurt by accepting one anyways. Alternatively, Bill could be working up the nerve to say he’s putting in a transfer as soon as possible, even if the paperwork is unlikely to go through without contestation from Ted.

However, Bill brings neither of those things up.

“Nice day out,” he says instead.

It might be the most inconsequential thing Bill has said to him in what feels like months. Ever since he moved to the opposite side of the basement getting a good morning from him—let alone more than thirty seconds of small talk—is like pulling teeth. Now he wants to sit around, after everything that’s happened, and talk about the weather? Holden bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep his expression from shifting as he feels his patience drain.

“I arranged the interview,” he says bluntly, not bothering to ease into the conversation like Bill is trying to do.

Bill turns to him with lines deepening on his forehead, twisting his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. He takes another drag and blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth, away from Holden. “When are we leaving?”

“Not we.” It feels cruel, but Holden keeps the hurt close to his chest, puts a lid on it before it can boil over and spill out. “Gregg and I are catching a flight tomorrow morning. The interview is scheduled for the 26th. I know you need Fridays off.”

Bill lets out a breathy laugh at that, closer to something mocking rather than amused. He sees right through Holden’s last minute justification. “How considerate of you.”

Holden tries not to glare at him.

“Gregg could use the experience,” he continues, a half-truth but also another excuse, hopefully less transparent than the last one. “If we want to finish the study in the timeframe Ted has suggested we need more people who know how to conduct interviews like we do.”

“Holden, do you really think you should be jumping back into this so soon?” Bill counters and the ball of his jaw tenses as he speaks. “We just got back from Atlanta.”

Holden reads between the lines and sees Bill’s concern written in the fine print. Despite being able to breeze through interviews without issue for the past several months, his episode must have shaken Bill's faith in him yet again.

“I want to get back to work,” Holden says. He hates how fragile he sounds despite his sangfroid. “What else am I supposed to do?”

Bill shrugs. “We need time to reconvene.”

“Like we did this morning?” Holden scoffs.

That stops Bill in his tracks. He shifts away and focuses his attention back on his cigarette, staring straight ahead. Holden is probably just as conflicted about what happened this morning as he is. The Valium that was dwindling in his system from the night before had staved off most of his anxiety during their meeting, but now Holden is sitting beside Bill without Gregg and Wendy to posture towards, surrounded by nameless agents who have their eyes on their lunch, and his pent-up anger has more room to breathe.

“You were right about the classification,” Bill begins and his anger only dissipates more. “I looked over the case afterwards and I think you might have something.”

His understated praise catches Holden off-guard, and so does the admission that he might have been wrong. It sounds like the closest thing Holden is going to an apology, but Bill knows him too well. He knows what to say to soften his edges, so Holden holds back on gratitude just yet.

“Gregg says he wants to talk to us, for one reason or another. It’ll be a routine interview. In and then out.”

“Holden,” Bill sighs, his name strained in his mouth. “You shouldn't give this asshole the time of day if you’re not up for it. Gregg is wet behind the ears and the way you left last night—”

Holden cuts him off, his panic intumescing as Bill threatens to acknowledge what happened. “I can handle it, Bill.”

Bill glances at him, his eyes unbearably blue in the sunlight that reaches past the feathered leaves of an oak tree sitting in the center of the gardens. The light drenches Bill in shattered shapes of yellow that shift with the breeze. A spaghetti-like knot twists in Holden's core and confusion, uninhibited by the obliviousness of their observers, floods him.

Bill had kissed him in the home Nancy had left empty, the sun-bleached carpet collecting dust, his golf shirts hanging on one side of the closet. Bill had kissed him and he tasted like need and spiced rum, the rest of which was spilling out onto the floor. Bill had kissed him and Holden had kissed him back without as much of a thought until the weight of his decision revealed itself in his panic, a panic that is incomprehensible even to him now.

Bill, his FBI partner, the head of his department, a married man fifteen years his senior, the father of a seven-year-old boy. Bill, his mentor, the only person he could call while he lay shattered in a hospital bed, his partner in a sense of the word that surpasses bureaucratic definitions, the only man he has ever kissed. None of these truths, fragmented and jagged and out of place, should fit together, but somehow they do. Holden wants to rip them apart again. He knows his hands will bleed but he would bleed for Bill.

“Have you talked to Nancy?”

Bill falters at that, the corners of his mouth pinched. “No, not since yesterday.”

Holden has little say over how Bill decides to pick up the pieces of his marriage, but he still feels somewhat responsible for scattering them in places that are harder to reach. His guilt only serves to light a fire underneath his feet as he becomes even more eager to run off to Missouri into the wrought iron arms of a penitentiary precinct. Being face-to-face with the thousand-yard stare of yet another killer is familiar territory, a problem Holden knows how solve, a subject he knows he can communicate with using the correct methodology, microphone poised at the ready, tape twisting in the recorder.

“Maybe you should call her,” Holden says and he hates how spiteful he sounds even without meaning to.

Bill has no answer for him.

They sit in silence as Bill smoke and flicks ash until his cigarette has burned down to the filter. He tosses it onto the ground to join the other cigarette butts snaking between the cracks of the cobblestone patio. Holden wishes they led somewhere, but they only look jumbled.

“Is that really what you want me to do?” Bill asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

Holden’s insides knot tighter. “What do you mean? What else can you do?”

The look Bill gives him is unbearable, the hurt seeping through his eyes. Holden has to look away. Bill shakes his head at himself.

“Forget it.”

A pathless quiet settles between them. It reads like everything they need to say but keep pushing into separate corners, further and further away until they can no longer reach them with both arms outstretched. Holden has trouble forming words that were said so easily in his moment of anger before Bill kissed him. He figures arguing hurts a lot less than not speaking at all, but his tongue remains cemented at the roof of his mouth.

Holden stands. “See you on Monday when I get back.”

A formality, not a goodbye.

He walks away, leaving Bill alone on the bench as they edge closer and closer towards irreparability.

*

Holden sits at his desk, his cup of tea going cold in his hand. Every tick of the clock makes him twitch, grip tightening around his pen as he fills out the paperwork needed to get into the precinct tomorrow. The ink smudges and Holden slumps back in his chair, staring at the pile of files in front of him as anxiety pulses in his temples.

It takes little else to convince himself to leave early. He grabs the documents he needs to bring to Jefferson City and waits until the office empties of the odd staff member dropping off mail or sorting through filing cabinets before finding his way out.

He thumbs the UP button more times than necessary, nervously listening as the mechanisms turn and the elevator descends. After several minutes of waiting, the doors open and he gets in, but as they begin to close someone calls out for him to hold it.

Holden reaches over and puts an arm across the entrance, stopping the doors from sliding shut as Wendy steps inside, heeled boots clacking against the floor. Holden retracts his hand and the elevator dings and starts to move. They stand beside each other, facing ahead. Wendy checks her watch. Holden notices.

“I thought I should have an early night before Gregg and I leave tomorrow morning,” he needlessly explains, something he does when his unease pushes him to talk about inconsequential things.

“Of course,” Wendy says. “How are you feeling about the interview?”

“Good, I suppose.”

“Well, I appreciate you including Gregg. He needs the training.”

“Right.” Holden keeps his actual reasoning to himself, but Wendy might already suspect why he might pass over Bill after their argument this morning. “Wendy, about earlier—”

“I spoke to Bill already.” She stiffens at the mention of their meeting, annoyance painting her face. “Look, I know what goes on between you and Bill is none of my business, but if Ted finds out that your inability to cooperate is poisoning our research then navigating this project is going to get very difficult.”

Holden stares at the indicator as the elevator moves from floor to floor, afraid that if he looks at Wendy her eyes will dismember him and analyze his insides. He knows what would happen if he revealed the truth. He knows there would be consequences if rumour spread that the agents whose job it was to study deviants were engaging in so-called deviant behaviour themselves; their superiors would lose all confidence in the study, their funding would be pulled, and they would be replaced if the project continued at all.

In the same vein, Holden has a hard time imagining Wendy would put everything they have accomplished at risk by letting this get out, especially when she kept the Speck tape under wraps for the sake of the unit. In discussions about Brudos or Henley, she has usually been willing to challenge the definitions of deviance with regard to cross-dressing or homosexuality, which puts Holden slightly more at ease. Maybe her opinion of him would be just as clinical, maybe even helpful.

He opens his mouth to speak, anxiety shifting underneath his skin, but then the elevator doors open. A group of agents shuffle inside, boisterously talking amongst themselves. Holden presses his molars together, his jaw tensing as the space around him closes in, but Wendy is there and her eyes are steadying. When they reach the lobby, they both get out.

“Walk with me to my car?” Wendy asks.

Holden follows close behind her as she leads him to the parking lot. As soon as the sun hits, a sweat breaks out on the back of his neck and underneath his arms, the muggy humidity unbearable in his suit. He takes off his jacket and loosens his tie as he tries to keep pace with Wendy beside him.

“From the looks of his file, Eddie Carroll has a history of erratic behaviour, even in prison. He spends a lot of his time in solitary for his own protection,” Wendy says and Holden is immediately relieved by the return to work-related conversation. “Despite his apparent eagerness to talk to us, he might try to derail the interview. If he seems hostile towards Gregg, take the lead. Otherwise, give Gregg a chance to build rapport.”

Holden nods in agreement. “I can do that. We need to construct a proper training program. Gregg will be a good guinea pig for that.”

Wendy unlocks her car and sets her briefcase in the back seat. She turns to Holden and leans up against the door. “Bill told me, just so you know.”

Holden’s stomach sinks to the pavement. “Bill told you what?”

“He told me what happened with Nancy.”

Holden sighs and the tension runs off his back. He regathers his composure. “Did he tell you about his transfer too?”

Wendy nods but says nothing more on the subject. “I understand that Bill is going through a lot right now, but he alone should bear the brunt of his issues. I talked to him and I believe he understands now why his behaviour was inappropriate.”

“I appreciate that, Wendy, but I can stand up for myself,” Holden insists, fed up with everyone treating him like a liability or like a child. “Bill and I talked this afternoon and I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

“Did Bill apologize?”

“In his own way.”

“So, no?”

With each passing mention of Bill, Holden feels his secret threatening to push past its seams. It only worsens the longer he holds it in; this unexplored and unacknowledged part of himself that Bill ripped from his ribcage then left him to sort through on his own. More than anything, Holden just wants to get rid of the isolation that comes with holding it so close to his chest.

“Holden, I just want to know what happened so we can rectify it,” Wendy continues with a sigh. “If Bill transfers out of the BSU our project will take a hit. Ted is already putting on the pressure and the success of our interviews so far has been built on you and Bill alone.”

Holden runs a hand through his hair, his palms clammy, itching out of his skin. He looks around and spots several other people in the parking lot, then points towards the empty passenger seat of Wendy’s car.

“May I?” Holden asks.

They sit inside and the suede seats and wood-panelled interior seem to suck up all the noise. When Holden finally speaks, his words settle heavier in the silence than he expected.

“Bill kissed me.”

At first, Wendy says nothing, her eyes locked on Holden as he stares at his hands folded in his lap, trying not to fidget. Wendy must notice because her posture eases and she drops her gaze, sitting back in her seat. Holden feels reaffirmed by her composed and collected response as she takes her time answering. His anxiety begins to dissipate.

“When did this happen?” she finally asks, and it only makes sense for her to approach this by getting the facts first. “In Atlanta?”

“No, last night,” Holden explains. “I met up with him at the bar after work. He had been drinking so I drove him home and he invited me inside to help him pack up some things, but then he told me he was transferring and it all just sort of happened.”

“Holden,” Wendy begins, looking him over carefully. “Was this consensual?”

“Yes,” Holden insists, maybe a little too quickly in his attempt to put her at ease. “But Bill was pretty drunk. I don’t think he would have done it otherwise.”

“Well, have you talked to him about it?”

“No.” Holden bites back a laugh at how ridiculous he feels with all of his poorly made decisions laid out to be picked apart by someone outside of his own head. “I, um, really embarrassed myself with the way I left.”

“How so?”

“I had another episode,” Holden explains and his shame intensifies. “I guess I was upset because Bill told me he was leaving and then when he kissed me I panicked. I don’t know why.”

“Holden, if these panic attacks are becoming a long-term, regular occurrence you need to pay close attention,” Wendy stresses, concern notched between her brows. “This could be very serious.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do, Wendy?” Holden says. “I take my medication, I regulate my stress, I watch for the signs, but sometimes it still happens and I have no control over where and when.” Holden lowers his voice. “I wanted it but every bone in my body told me to run out on him. Why?”

Wendy thinks it over, her fingers steepling. “The first time this happened, you said Ed Kemper hugged you. Correct?”

“What does that have to do with Bill?”

“Your acute stress response can be triggered regardless of what your logical reaction would be,” she explains. “You and Bill had an argument, you were already upset and vulnerable, and then Bill kissed you, an unexpected physical response. This accumulation of stimuli triggered an episode.”

“How I feel about Bill is a lot different from how I feel about Ed Kemper.”

“You may know that, but in these situations, our brains can easily get their wires crossed, especially in people with anxiety-related disorders. Have you ever considered seeing a psychologist?”

“I am right now.”

Wendy rolls her eyes. “Holden, we work together. It’s not my job to do all the emotional heavy lifting between you and Bill.” Her tone is light and joking but Holden knows to take note. “I can give you advice, but my main concern is how this affects our project. Are you going to be able to go with Gregg to Missouri tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because I can talk to Bill and ask if he can go instead. He knows what to look out for if you have another panic attack.”

“No, the whole reason I chose Gregg was to avoid Bill,” Holden says, recalling the unbearable tenseness of their last conversation. Keeping it together for the interview would be the least of his worries if he was forced to deal with his pent-up emotions while cooped up on a red-eye flight or in a rental car or in a hotel room in a different state with Bill for two days. “I appreciate the concern but I can handle this.”

With that, Wendy backs off.

Holden glances down at his watch. “I should go.”

He gets out of the car, but before he can shut the door, Wendy looks over at him. Her grin is fonder than it usually is, the charming smile lines around her mouth creased.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Holden asks with a smirk, shrugging on his jacket again.

“No reason.” Wendy turns her keys in the ignition. “Good luck with the interview and take care of yourself.”

“Thanks.” Holden shuts the door. “I will.”

*

Bill stares at the telephone on his desk, fiddling with a crumpled up piece of paper he tore off a notepad at Holden’s apartment. His thumbnail traces the smudgy blue ink where he scribbled down an unfamiliar phone number, reading the digits over and over until he can work up the nerve.

He thought Nancy would have contacted him by now. She should have saved him the trouble of calling first, left wondering whether she would pick up up this time or if yesterday morning would be the last. The line has been silent all day. Bill can’t tell if he’s relieved or disappointed.

He reaches for the handset and hears the dial tone droning louder and louder as he lifts it to his ear. He dials the number and waits. It rings once, then twice, then three times, each ring an aggravation. Bill is about ready to hang up when a soft voice crackles through.

“Hello?”

He feels his lungs seize up. “Nancy?”

“Bill?”

He exhales to relax the peach pit sized lump in his throat. “I just wanted to call to see how you were doing.”

“Fine,” Nancy says. She sounds like she does around real estate clients she secretly dislikes, tense but trying to appear bubbly as she shows them through an open house. “Brian is fine. He just got out of the bath.”

Bill sighs, regret pulling him under at the first mention of his son. He misses him so much that thinking of his messy brown hair and the freckles dotted across his nose is almost unbearable. He wishes he was there to line up his rubber ducks on the side of the tub and splash soapy water at him as he giggles and blows at the bubbles. Maybe if he tried a little harder, worked less late nights like he is right now, he could be. The familiar thought hits him like a fist colliding with his gut over and over and over. It never lessens its effect.

Bill pinches the skin between his eyebrows. “Have you told him yet?”

“He was supposed to think you were still in Atlanta,” Nancy explains, “but after yesterday I said you were spending a few days at the old house while I unpacked the rest of our things.”

Bill feels sick, reminded of why he was reluctant to call in the first place. “Why are you lying to him, Nancy?”

“What else am I supposed to say, Bill?” Nancy bites back and resentment immediately overrides any niceties they had left for each other. “Am I supposed to tell him that dad is never coming home?”

“Never?” Bill clenches his jaw so hard he thinks his teeth might break. “I would have come home, Nance, but you moved all of our shit out of the house and left before I had the chance.”

Nancy goes quiet for a moment. Bill festers in the silence.

“Have you made your decision then?” she says, her voice cutting through the line like a knife, smug like she thinks she knows his answer.

Bill has barely had time to think about it with Nancy and work and Holden and Wendy pulling him in a hundred different directions. What happened last night with Holden is a constant in the back of his mind, tainting any well thought out decision he could possibly make. Bill is reminded of his mouth, sweet and wet, his skin warm beneath the press of his fingertips, but all Bill really wants is to see his son or at the very least have the assurance that he can see him sometime soon.

“I want to work through this in person,” Bill says, closing in on desperation. “I want to see Brian.”

“Okay.” Bill can hear Nancy sigh or take a drag of a cigarette, white noise sputtering on the other end. “When can you get off work? I’ll be here tomorrow morning. Brian’s sitter is only available on Thursday afternoons.”

“Tomorrow morning is fine.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Goodnight, Bill.”

“Tell Brian I love him,” Bill says before Nancy can hang up, ignoring the sting in his eyes as his mouth forms those last three words.

“I will.”

The line goes dead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bsu: yeah we gay keep scrolling
> 
> let me know your thoughts :)
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://fordtench.tumblr.com/)


	6. jefferson city, missouri

Holden feels his stomach lurch as the wheels of the airplane retract. It lifts off the runway at a thirty-degree angle, the city falling away below them. Street corners and storefronts shrink into cloud cloaked miniatures like dollhouse figurines.  
  
As the airplane rights itself in the sky, Holden lets his hands relax around the armrests of his seat. He looks to his left, shying away from the thousand-foot drop outside his window, and is disappointed to see Gregg beside him instead of Bill. Gregg casually flips through the morning newspaper, bottom lip caught between his teeth in thought, and Holden imagines Bill there, shifting in his seat as he impatiently waits for the no smoking indicator to flick off before finding his cigarettes in his jacket pocket and lighting up.  
  
It does just that. A cheery ding comes over the PA and the stewardesses begin wheeling out carts to pass passengers refreshments. Holden avoids eye contact, staring at the open file in his lap, but Gregg hands him a Styrofoam cup half-filled with watery orange juice.  
  
“Thanks,” Holden says and sets it on his tray in front of him with no intention of drinking it.  
  
“Do you not like flying?” Gregg asks.

His good nature somehow make the question even more grating. Compared to Holden, he seems to be looking forward to the interview. His cheery demeanor masks any nervousness Holden had expected from him. That coupled with the stilted small talk—which Holden can usually appreciate coming from Bill—only acts to underline his decision to push Bill out and bring Gregg in. In a way, Holden is more irritated with himself for making an issue out of it than he is about Gregg tagging along.  
  
“I like it just fine,” Holden replies flatly.  
  
Gregg takes the hint and returns to his newspaper while Holden staves off the urge to shake his head at himself. He knows acting this way is unfair when he was the one who convinced Gregg to come, but Bill stays on his mind no matter how hard he tries to shake him off. It stirs his anxiety, building the pressure for the interview to go well. Otherwise, Bill will be reaffirmed in his thinking, and Holden will be left with his compulsive need to impress and his failure to prove he can do this without him.  
  
Holden tries to review his notes on Eddie Carroll to distract himself, but his mind is still elsewhere. After realizing for the fifth time he’s reading the same line over again, he closes the folder and shuts his eyes. The flight to Missouri should be about two hours, but the last thirty minutes have felt twice as long.  
  
When he thinks he might finally be dozing off, listening to the unpleasant drone of the engines whirring, he hears the near frantic rustling of newspaper. Gregg sets it down on the tray in front of him, almost knocking over his untouched orange juice. The paper is neatly folded in half to reveal an article on page two.  
  
“They set a trial date,” Gregg says, voice lower than it needs to be.  
  
Holden sits up, looks over, and is met with a photo of Wayne Williams. It was taken the day he was arrested. His head is down, the glare of a dozen flashing cameras reflected in his oversized eyeglasses. Holden scans the article, his heart rate increasing with every word inked onto the page.  
  
“January of next year,” Holden says as he gets to the end.  
  
He sounds disaffected, but his throat is constricting, breath shallow in his chest. He can feel the Atlantan heat humid on the back of his neck again. He can smell the putrid stench of the river, mud caked into the soles of his shoes.  
  
Gregg grimaces. “Do you think he’ll plead not guilty?”  
  
Holden nods, fiddling with the serrated edge of the newspaper, willing himself to be calm. “In his mind, he’s done nothing wrong.”  
  
As Holden stares down at the photograph, he knows he was right, to some extent. Williams is in no way innocent, even if he’s not responsible for all twenty-eight murders. Holden feels it in his bones. He finds shallow comfort in the marrow as his instincts are proven true once again. Still, it can only go so far in quelling his unease.  
  
Maybe it was naive of him to think that once the FBI was no longer needed and the case was all but closed, he could wipe his hands clean. An impending trial reminds him of the scrutiny he will have to face for trying to force his methods upon a skeptical audience. Scrutiny from the media, from Bill, from the bureau itself, and worst of all the families who he made empty promise after empty promise to.  
  
“Will there be enough evidence to convict?” Gregg asks.  
  
“I would think so,” Holden reasons, anxiety rolling in and falling away like a tide. “It seems like everyone wants this to quietly go away, an unpleasant blip in an otherwise prosperous year.”  
  
“Except you.”  
  
Holden glances at Gregg, his bitterness vanishing for a moment. He wonders if Gregg really means it as a compliment or if he sees this an opportunity to regain some goodwill after the fallout from the OPR investigation. But Gregg is too frustratingly well-meaning to come up with something like that. It would be incompatible with whatever moral code made him send in the Speck tape in the first place.  
  
“I do want it to go away,” Holden says, “just not like this.”  
  
Although a conviction is imminent, the children are all left unanswered for; case files collecting dust in the evidence room of some underfunded and understaffed police station. The way the case concluded—fueling a media frenzy further interlocked with contentious public opinion—Holden knows some of the focus during the trial is going to fall on the BSU. If the defence any sense at all, they will try to pick apart their newly developed techniques.  
  
His impulsiveness has come back to bite him in the ass, just like Bill thought it would. Holden can cradle the spark, hold it in hand as it presses him forward, causes him to lose sleep in lieu of looking over case files or carry crosses through overgrown backlots, but he always ends up with burned fingers as he holds onto the match for too long. At best, it shows him to be incompetent in front of everyone. At worst, it has real consequences for the investigation being carried out. Maybe he pushed too hard. Maybe Bill was right to have so little faith in him.  
  
Holden hands the newspaper back to Gregg, eyes trained on the seat in front of him. He evens out his breath. As they hit a bout of turbulence and the body of the plane rattles, he clenches his jaw.  
  
“Holden, are you alright?”  
  
Holden grounds himself, presses the crown of his skull into the center of his headrest until it feels like something solid is beneath him. He reaches inside his pocket for his bottle of Valium, ignoring Gregg’s concerned stare as he uncaps it and places two pills on his tongue without thinking, round and white like shrunken moons. He washes them down with his lukewarm cup of orange juice.  
  
“We should go over the interview schedule.”

*

The street is oddly quiet for a Thursday morning in June. Unlike the last time Bill was here, there are no children racing around on bicycles or neighbours out preening their lawns, but the local pools must be swarming. Despite the overcast weather, the temperature has climbed to an unbearable 87 degrees, the air stagnant and sick with humidity.  
  
Bill wonders how hot it is in Missouri, but he pushes the thought away before it brings forth Holden and all the worry that comes with him. The interview is tomorrow. Bill will have lots of time for that later.  
  
He parks in the driveway and finds his way onto the porch. After some hesitation, he knocks on the door. His ringed knuckle raps against the wood rustically painted bright red like Christmas ornaments and cherry pie. As he waits, he wonders how Nancy will receive him, whether their resentment will carry over from their telephone conversation or whether the time between then and now gave their anger enough space to scatter.  
  
The door opens and she appears, arms crossed over her chest. Her floral blouse is loose and crinkled, curls in tight ringlets around her head like a muddy blonde halo. She smells like stale cigarette smoke thinly masked with perfume, pleasant and recognizable in a way that makes Bill homesick and simultaneously reminds him there is no home.  
  
“Would you like to come in?” she asks, straightforward and straight-faced.  
  
At this point, Bill expects nothing less than half-assed civility. He leaves the tension unacknowledged for now and nods. She steps aside, ushering him in, then shuts the door behind him.  
  
The foyer opens up into a cramped sitting room. Shag green carpet, walls panelled with wood, faux brocade curtains. The interior is Brady Bunch-esque, early 70s suburban chic. Bill scans the room to see what he can pick out amongst the furniture and place back in their home on the other side of town. The family photographs must be in boxes because the mantel is uncluttered, the walls bare. There is no sofa, only two unfamiliar armchairs and the coffee table Nancy took from their living room. It all looks temporary, not yet settled into. Bill is relieved to see things are upended in his absence, but it makes him uneasy. Without everything having fallen into place, Nancy could easily pack up and move out of his reach.  
  
She hovers in the doorway. “Do you want some coffee?”  
  
Bill looks at her but not too closely. “If you have some.”  
  
The gesture is falsely domestic, less falling back into innate behaviour and more like playing house. They had been playing house long before Brian came along and they had gotten pretty good at it, putting on a show for neighbours and colleagues while they ate away at each other behind closed doors.  
  
Nancy rifles around in the kitchen, cupboards opening and closing more times than necessary as she finds her way around the house. He watches as she sets two coffee mugs on the counter, two spoons, then grabs the cream and sugar. She roots around in the refrigerator with her back turned to him and Bill feels odd for looking. He feels like a stranger here, like a voyeur, out of place and leering.  
  
How long has it been since the last time he touched her, let alone the last time they had sex? Bill can count the instances in the past year on one hand. Their growing disinterest is his fault as much as hers; his priorities have been divided, his attention turned to work and if not work then Brian. Whenever they had any time, he spent it placating her in a way that allowed him to keep his distance.  
  
Gone are the days when he was fresh out of Korea at twenty years old and willing to marry the first thing in silk stockings that moved. Nancy meant so much more than that, but she was inevitable, the best and easiest choice after the years he spent eyeing up new recruits as they piled into the barracks. They were as green as their freshly washed army fatigues, but they would soon be stained with blood and dirt or burned through by cigarette butts in breast pockets and the skin-melting barrel of a recently fired mortar. He remembers how rough that fabric felt between his desperate fingers. In the early morning before sunrise, a boy just as terrified as him had pressed his tongue against his teeth and Bill, not old enough to drink but old enough to enlist, was compelled forward by the possibility that they might die when light finally broke.  
  
Bill looks away, ashamed for reliving memories that he usually suppresses when his family is within reach and moments like those are decades passed. He feels even more ashamed when the face of his once makeshift lover—grey eyes bright with tracers in the dark, mousy brown hair matted with mud, stubble patchy on his chin—shifts into the face of someone else.  
  
Nancy hands him his coffee, cloudy with cream, and the hot ceramic burns his fingertips.

“Have you finished unpacking?” Bill asks, forcing small talk.

“Just about,” Nancy says. She looks exhausted. “There are a few boxes left in the garage. Some of your things.” She motions to the kitchen table by the bay window, their kitchen table. “Do you want to sit?”  
  
Bill is reluctant. He knows that sitting down together will bring having an actual conversation about everything that much closer. “Where’s Brian?”  
  
Nancy looks irritated. She knows him well enough to pick out when he’s avoiding something, even if she does nothing to stop him.  
  
“He’s still sleeping.” She points towards a closed door at the end of the hallway that sprouts off the kitchen. “Go ahead, just try not to wake him. It’s been difficult getting him to bed the last few nights.”  
  
Bill sets his untouched coffee on the counter and finds his way down the hall, his footfall on the carpet as quiet as he can make it. Brian’s room is sparsely decorated, an open box of clothes by his dresser, toys still unpacked, walls bare enough to give off a slight echo as the door creaks open.  
  
He’s asleep like Nancy said he would be. His thumb is in his mouth, his breath barely audible as his narrow chest rises and falls underneath his pile of blankets. Bill carefully sits on the edge of his bed and reaches out to ghost his hand over Brian’s sleep mussed hair, much gentler than he needs to be not to wake him. Even if Brian doesn’t know Bill is here, it’s nice to share in the silence with his son before everything falls further apart. He presses a kiss to his forehead and for a second Brian is three years old again; quiet as always but hiding behind his legs instead of hiding from him, playing with his ties or standing in his shoes as he got ready for work.

Bill never really wanted to be a father, not until he was one.  
  
When he looks up again, Nancy is standing in the doorway. Her demeanour has softened, but her face is still sombre, either holding back anger or holding back tears.  
  
“Would you really take him away from me, Nance?” Bill asks, his voice hushed. He swallows hard and wills his temper not to break through at a time like this, not with his son beside him. “Would you really make me choose?”  
  
“It should be an easy choice,” Nancy says.

It stings with its simplicity. Bill’s stomach twists in knots. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth as his eyes well. He looks down at Brian, still asleep thankfully, then stands. He meets Nancy in the hallway and softly closes the bedroom door.  
  
“I would do it for him, Nancy,” Bill says, tone subdued but anger unbidden. “But is uprooting his life going to do anything but make it harder for him to readjust after all this? New neighbourhood? New school? New kids to pick on him?”  
  
“I know.” Nancy breaks eye contact with him, the inside of her cheek caught between her teeth. “But maybe this is what needs to happen for Brian to have his father in his life.”  
  
“Because forcing me to quit my job and move across town is going to bring me back?” Bill snaps. “The reason why I left the military and took this job was so we could stop moving around, settle down and have a family like you wanted.”

“And how has that turned out? I thought asking you to reconsider your career would be a wakeup call at least.” Nancy matches his bitterness. “But I guess it was silly of me to think you might finally take some responsibility.”

Bill blinks at her, trying to come up with a justification but finding none. He remembers what Holden said to him in the moment before they kissed.

“I tried, Nancy, I really did,” is all Bill can say.

“Did you? Because I was here when you left for work and I was here when you came home. I took care of Brian when you could barely look at him most days. I tried to be understanding when you left for weeks at a time and phoned every other night at most, and now you want to act like you were always there for him? For me?”  
  
This argument is the same one they have been having for years now, dressed up in a different way. The situation with Brian and the Atlanta case has amplified it recently, but it was always there, closing in on them like their vision was tunnelling, the edges of their picture-perfect family vignetting.

“Look,” Bill strains, “I know I could have been there more—”

“But did you want to be?” Nancy interrupts. “Or was chasing after a child murderer with Holden easier for you than coming home?”

Bill’s anger sharpens at Holden’s name and the Atlanta case being used flippantly to provoke him. “Why the hell are you bringing Holden into this?”

“Your sudden trip to California?” She crosses her arms. “When was the last time you dropped everything just like that? When I asked you to take time off work, you said no.”

“He called me.” Bill sighs. “He was in the hospital on the other side of the country. What else was I supposed to do?”

“He had no one else he could call?” Nancy scoffs as their argument deteriorates into an exchange of low blows.

“Leave him out of this,” Bill warns. His jaw is set. “Was I supposed to let him rot away in a hospital bed? Our assistant director was riding my ass to do my fucking job and Holden is a part of that. My work is important to me, Nancy.”

“Oh, I know,” she bites back. “You make it very obvious to everyone where your priorities lie. You rarely even talk about Brian except to his therapist.”

Bill clenches his teeth. He glances at the bedroom door which separates the space between them, then grasps her elbow slackly and guides her into the living room away from where Brian can hear. He returns his hand to his side, flexing his fist.

“What am I supposed to tell them?” he asks incredulously. His voice is soft and hushed but closer to sibilance. “Am I supposed to say that my kid hates me? That he watched two boys murder a toddler? If I asked Gunn for time off and told him why, I might not lose my job but I sure as hell will be looked at differently as a federal agent who is supposed to investigate homicides, not be indirectly involved in them.”

“Then you see why I had to leave,” Nancy is quick to say. “I had to get Brian out of there. He was basically walking around that neighbourhood with a target on his back. None of the other kids would play with him and their parents . . .”

She trails off mid-thought as she composes herself, willfully staving off tears. Bill sees the stretch of her neck twitch as she swallows hard and looks blankly ahead, her chestnut brown eyes clouding. A moment passes and the quiet consumes them. Bill wonders if he should leave, slam the door behind him just to break up the silence and find some relief in the chaos.

“I tried to get through to him,” he says instead. “I told him how fucking terrified I was of all of this and he looked right through me, Nancy, and then you left.”

He shakes his head, pushing away thoughts of empty bedrooms and blank walls that make every part of him twinge with weighted guilt. Tears blur his vision. He blinks them away.

He continues. “Do you know how it felt to come back and see our home gutted and torn apart like that?”

Nancy meets his eyes, cold and unyielding, but they share in the sadness for the first time in a very long time instead of letting it pour out in asynchronous bouts. She looks prepared to confess. Her head is slightly bowed, lip curled inwards as it trembles, but she looks dignified as well, still holding herself together while Bill is the one who falters.

“While you were still in Atlanta and I was packing everything away, I truly believed that we could just move past this,” she begins, “I don’t know why—I guess I thought this could be a new start for Brian, but for our marriage as well.” She shakes her head. “Wishful thinking.”

“Nancy—” Bill starts to say, but she continues speaking.

“I fooled myself into being hopeful about all this, but when I was packing I realized that I was putting all of your things in a separate box.” Each word is more and more strained, but she persists. “For a minute, I entertained the idea of leaving your shit behind—your shirts in the closet, the files in your office, that awful couch and all the resentment and the arguments with it—and I felt relieved.”  
  
She lets out an abrupt sigh, almost a laugh, and some of the tension falls from her face. The frown lines cut like lacerations across her forehead uncrease, but there are tears on her cheeks. The haze of light pouring in through the small window is reflected in their sheen.  
  
“I thought if I gave you an ultimatum I could make you stay when you finally came home,” Nancy confesses. “I was trying to hold onto you with both hands. I have been for a while, but after our argument, after you left again, that feeling of relief returned.”

Bill feels sick. He holds his breath in his lungs to counter the hurt rousing in his chest.

“What are you trying to say?” he asks.

“I don’t know, Bill,” Nancy says. “All I know is this isn’t working. This isn’t good for Brian.”

The word divorce or separation or, God forbid, lawyer must be on the tip of her tongue, but she stops there and lets Bill figure it out for himself. Alarm prickles underneath his skin the moment he realizes what she means and he knows where this has been heading from the start. His reaction is instinctive, born from desperation rather than what he really wants. He reaches out and takes her hand, holds her there in front of him. He looks her in the eyes but sees nothing in them but finality.  
  
“Nancy, please,” he says, a plea to no one for nothing in particular, half-formed and useless. “Please.”  
  
She looks down at their hands—interlocked but limply so—and sighs. Her breath is uneven and shaky. “I think your decision was made before I even asked. It just took some time for both of us to realize.”

Without another word, Bill drops her hand and they fall apart.

Nancy takes a pointed step backwards; the last cut in a series of thousands. It settles over his heart, between his fourth and fifth rib, the only unmarked stretch of skin he has left. The others are shallow, missed birthdays or anniversaries or offhanded remarks, dinner parties ruined by arguments, nights spent sleeping on the couch. This cut is deeper, maybe the deepest, and Bill feels the wetness creep down his side as the bleeding begins.

But maybe now, at least, he can try to heal.

*

Jefferson City, Missouri is eerie in its quaintness, and as Holden and Gregg emerge from the crowded airport terminal, all the trappings of a small town make themselves known. Holden spots roadside motels with gimmicky names, vintage dives and even dingier holes-in-the-wall, mom and pop shops, convenience stores with weatherworn Coca-Cola machines and faded 1960s cigarette ads taped inside their windows.  
  
They pick up their rental car—an amber coloured 1976 Ford Cortina—and make their way into town via Highway 54. The Valium has yet to fade from his system and the passenger seat is more familiar, so Holden lets Gregg drive, ignoring the smirk of self-satisfaction on Gregg’s face as he tosses him the keys.  
  
Holden rolls the window down. It looks like it might thunderstorm. The atmosphere is dense and acidic with the staticky threat of lightning. He breathes in and the air smells earthy, polluted by the Missouri River that weaves through town and splits it in two.

They cross over the Jefferson City Bridge. The trestles are brown and rusted like the turbid water below which encroaches upon the shrubbery speckled flood lands. The penitentiary sits just upstream, a few miles past the Missouri State Capitol. Its presence is much more foreboding than the building that houses the state legislature, its architecture reminiscent of Ancient Rome yet sickeningly colonial, stone Corinthian columns awash with white. The facade of the penitentiary is comparatively weathered and left in a state of disrepair. Its brick is stained from years of rainfall, bars on the windows chipping away with wear.  
  
Holden stares at it blankly as they pass, any anxiety that remained from their flight thoroughly muffled.  
  
They check into the hotel. The receptionist is an attractive brunette, a girl-next-door type, her hair almost touching her waist and parted neatly down the middle. She smiles at Gregg, but he avoids her eyes as she hands him his key.

Holden bites back his amusement. Although Gregg is older than him and probably more experienced than him in certain corners of the FBI, his bumbling and awkward way of going about things reminds Holden of how he was when he first joined the BSU and began conducting interviews. He was better at it, obviously, but he does feel some sympathy. Even more so, he feels an ache for how things were at the start, Bill at his side, trying to guide him through it.  
  
“Do you think we have a good enough strategy?” Gregg asks as they find their way to their respective rooms, hauling their sparingly packed luggage with them.  
  
Holden sees the apprehension on his face but shrugs it off. He stops in the middle of the hallway when he spots his room number.

“We’ll be fine,” he says.

He has no patience to offer any better assurance than that, but Gregg is persistent.  
  
“I’m not sure about the interview schedule,” he continues. “I think if we start off by asking about his family history then—”  
  
“Look, there’s no point in over-preparing,” Holden interrupts. His hand grips the doorknob, the other his room key. “If you overprepare, you become inflexible and if you go in there all rigid, the subject can tell. They’ll use that against you. Trust me.”  
  
Gregg seems to relax. “Anything else?”  
  
Holden remembers what Wendy told him about giving Gregg a chance to actively lead the interview. “If Carroll is receptive, stick to the interview schedule,” Holden says. “If not, follow my lead.”  
  
“I can do that. Is this the way you usually do things with Bill?”  
  
Holden bites down hard on the inside of his lip. “Sort of. Less planning.” It sounds backhanded, but if Gregg takes it that way he does well hiding it. “The interview is tomorrow, so go relax. Go sightsee or something.”  
  
Gregg raises his eyebrows. “Sightsee? Sightsee what?”  
  
“The inside of the hotel bar,” Holden deadpans.  
  
Gregg laughs through his nose. “Want to come?”  
  
“No.” Holden shakes his head and unlocks the door of his room. “But I think the hotel receptionist likes you.”  
  
“Holden, I have a wife,” Gregg says, comically serious.  
  
“Right.”  
  
Gregg disappears into his own room across the hall. Holden does the same. As soon as the door clicks shut, he throws his travel bag on the nearest chair and collapses onto his bed.  
  
His mind is blank for once, but it feels like his brain is pushing up against his skull, threatening to pour out through his ears and his eye sockets. The Valium swims in his system, drawing him closer to sleep as he stares up at the generic painting hanging above the bed frame; abstract strokes of red and yellow and white that remind him less of high art and more of the inside of a fast-food restaurant.  
  
He closes his eyes and drifts.  
  
When Holden wakes up again, the sky is darkening outside his rain speckled window. He turns on his side to face the ugly brown and beige striped wallpaper. His eyes drop to the empty space beside him, the slightly rumpled sheets tucked beneath the spare pillow. In the days of Road School and rundown motel rooms, Holden would spend hours pretending to be asleep, staring at the opposite wall while he listened to Bill speak to Nancy on the phone.  
  
Even then, he knew something was wrong. Something between Bill and Nancy was broken and bloody and mangled but left unacknowledged. It was like a limb torn up from shrapnel hanging onto an otherwise intact body, left to bleed out without a tourniquet until it drained every vein dry. Initially, Holden saw it in the way Bill profiled unsubs who he suspected were divorced or stuck in ill-fated marriages, but it became all the more obvious when Bill invited him over to dinner. He could see the tension with his own eyes. He could feel how it swallowed up the entire room. It sat in the space between Bill and Nancy at the table. It goaded Holden to glance at the space separating Debbie and himself, a warning.  
  
In the mornings after those 2 AM calls, Holden would watch the sun seep through the blinds onto Bill’s bed and trace the outline of his broad shoulder blades through the sheets and through his thin, white undershirt. He would count the dark freckles on his arms, connecting the dots like the stars of the Big Dipper, then roll over before looking stopped being accidental and started to mean something.  
  
It must be the Valium or the soupy dregs of sleep because Holden feels nothing but warmth instead of anxiety and shame and guilt as he recalls those memories. They pool in the bottom of his stomach as he shifts over on the mattress and realizes his cock is half-hard against his inner thigh.  
  
Half a year has passed since Debbie, even longer since the last time they had sex. He almost wants to indulge these thoughts of Bill, if only to regain some of his humanity after the Atlanta investigation consumed his life for the better part of several months. Spending all his time and effort navigating bureaucratic restrictions, sorting through decades-old criminal records, and losing sleep at the thought of finding more bodies had reduced his libido to nothing. At the time, he was more concerned with Bill abandoning the case halfway through than the smattering of freckles on his arms or the muscles in his back, smooth and taut underneath his sweat stained polo.  
  
Holden sits up, perspiration breaking out on his skin as he edges on delirium. His tie has a chokehold around his neck so he loosens it, then decides to hell with it and strips off the rest of his clothes as he clumsily makes his way to the bathroom. He feels loopy having taken a larger dose of Valium than his prescription recommends, but he finds it hard to care as he turns on the shower and waits for the water to run hot. He steps in and his thoughts return to Bill and only Bill.  
  
He stands there for a moment, water trickling down his back, trying to fight away the shame as his erection becomes harder to ignore, pulsing pleasantly yet unpleasantly. He leans forward, his forehead and his forearm laid flat against the cool shower tiles, and takes himself in hand.  
  
Afterwards, as his breath evens and his release fades into a dull and unreachable ache, Holden scrubs his skin raw with the hotel provided soap, then shampoos and conditions his hair until every speck of dirt and grime from the airport is long gone. He smells flowery and artificial like roses stuffed into a can of air freshener, but his guilt makes him feel just as unwashed as before.  
  
He pulls himself back to reality—knowing full well the dangers of indulging too much in fantasy—and reminds himself that Bill has a family and he has a career. He has a responsibility to his wife and his son and to the bureau not to get involved with someone like Holden and tarnish everything he has accomplished. Even if he gave up on trying to fix his marriage, it would never work out between them. His choice would never be Holden.  
  
The Valium keeps these thoughts from sticking around too long, but Holden knows in the morning the anxiety will return along with his sobriety. He turns off the shower and lets the water run off his fingertips into the basin of the tub, splatting against the porcelain. A chill runs through him.

It must be the drugs mixed with the warped and fading high of his orgasm, but for a moment he imagines the word deviant written in soap bubbles near his feet.  
  
He watches as it swirls in the water. It washes down the drain, sputtering in the pipes like muted laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you've got bill being served divorce papers on one end and holden sadly masturbating on the other. lucky you.
> 
> oh and follow your prescriptions and don't overdo it. holden is dumb.
> 
> (also, i changed the chapter titles because they were too long and i was running out of angsty lyrics)
> 
> let me know what you thought!
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://fordtench.tumblr.com/)


	7. matthew 10:28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mentions of murder, rape, misogyny, and bad language.

Dr. Moritz’s waiting room smells like a dentist’s office, sterile and uncharacteristic like hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes. Bill eyes the clock, then the coffee table scattered with outdated magazines. A bead maze sits atop a discarded stack, its blockish wood painted in pre-K primary colours. 

Bill sits across from Nancy on the opposite end of the waiting room. Her face is concealed by a copy of _ Ladies’ Home Journal _and as she lowers the magazine to turn the page, Bill can only see the top of her head and her downturned eyes. 

He peruses the cover lines for something to do as they silently wait out the last fifteen minutes of Brian’s appointment. The words stand out in all caps against a washed-out photograph of Nancy Reagan, faded and wrinkled around the edges like someone at some point spilt their complimentary coffee on it. 

“Change your look! 8 page total makeover guide!”

“Pancake recipes for every meal.” 

“Decorating: Bathroom miracles you can afford!”

“How to shield your child from sex molesters.” 

Bill tries not to think about Atlanta or work or Holden two states away preparing for an interview without him. Bill looks at the firetruck red telephone at reception, but Holden left without giving him a number to call even if he wanted to touch base. The radio in the corner of the room plays muzak. Bill grinds his teeth.

A few minutes later, the office door opens and Brian shuffles out accompanied by Dr. Moritz. The round-faced, bespectacled man smiles politely as he ushers Brian towards Bill and Nancy as they get to their feet. 

Brian immediately goes to her side, only affording Bill a glance. Brian is dressed in a loose Star Wars t-shirt, khaki shorts and sneakers, but his complexion looks much too pale for a seven-year-old boy in the middle of summer vacation. He should be outside. He should be riding his bicycle around the neighbourhood or playing baseball with his schoolmates or fishing at sleep-away camp like Bill did at his age, not stuck in an air-conditioned office on a sunny Friday afternoon.

Guilts nags at Bill. He swallows it down. 

“We ended a bit early today,” Dr. Moritz says. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Is everything alright?” Nancy asks as she reaches out to grasp Brian’s hand, but he turns away before she can reach him. She falters for half a second, then straightens, smoothing out her tan corduroy pencil skirt. 

“Of course, Mrs. Tench,” Dr. Moritz assures. “I just thought we could take some time to discuss a few things in my office.”

Nancy glances at Bill and Bill shares her uncertainty. Brian must have told Dr. Moritz about their unexpected move or hinted that something’s been going on at home. Bill left yesterday with the assumption that they were going to take some time away from each other before putting a label on things and getting lawyers involved. Nancy had said as much. 

They leave Brian in the waiting room under the supervision of Dr. Moritz’s receptionist and step into his office. Despite the motivational posters hanging on the walls and the toys scattered across the carpet and the wide windows that allow the sunshine to pour inside unbidden, the room has an oppressive atmosphere that sets Bill on edge.

Dr. Moritz sits down at his desk while he and Nancy take a seat on the other side. His office may be dressed up to look comforting to children, but it reminds Bill of holding cells and interrogation rooms, places where your secrets are torn from your chest and laid out on the table like viscera in a slaughterhouse. 

Dr. Moritz flips through a pad of notebook paper in front of him scribbled over in illegible shorthand. “Mr. Tench, it’s my understanding that you were in Atlanta for work. Is that correct?”

Bill shifts in his seat. “Yes, I was part of the investigation down there.”

“I read about that in the newspaper.” Dr. Moritz inquisitively leans forward in his chair, hands clasped. “Just awful. Those poor children.”

Bill feels Nancy settle her gaze on him. It threatens to split him in two. He redirects the conversation. “How’s Brian?”

Nancy averts her eyes back to Dr. Moritz and Bill can breathe a bit easier.

“Well, Brian expressed several concerns to me,” Dr. Moritz begins. “He told me that Mr. Tench is home but not _ at _ home.”

Bill presses his tongue against his teeth as his insides tangle. Hearing the situation acknowledged makes it all the more unavoidable and the discomfort swimming between him and Nancy becomes palpable. Dr. Moritz must sense it because he continues speaking, preventing it from taking up too much space. 

“Our intention is never to focus on the parents or the inner workings of their marriage until we can see that it harms the child.” His voice is gentle, too gentle, and his eyes are kind like he’s still on child psychologist mode. “If it comes to that, we usually intervene in some capacity to facilitate communication and see how we might improve the situation.” 

Bill shoots Nancy a look, feeling ill at ease for being inadvertently trapped in a therapy session of his own. She stares ahead, avoiding his eyes.

“Bill and I are living separately at the moment,” Nancy says and the corners of her mouth draw in tight. “Brian and I moved out of the house.”

Bill grips the armrests of his chair a little tighter.

“Oh,” Dr. Moritz says, obviously taken aback but trying not to show it as he turns to Nancy. “Mrs. Tench, I know it must be a very difficult decision, but even so it can be beneficial to consult us before making any life changes that could affect Brian negatively.”

“I did what I had to do,” Nancy maintains, her face hardening. “Brian is _ my _ child.”

Bill feels oddly caught in the middle. His agitation grows as he looks at his watch and then at the door, imagining Brian outside in the waiting room alone, staring blankly ahead at the bead maze but not playing with it; triangles and squares and circles guided through a messy entanglement of wire only to reach the end and backtrack to the start. 

“Of course, Mrs. Tench,” Dr. Moritz says. “If you were at all interested, I could recommend several counsellors to you and your husband.”

“Marriage counselling?” Bill asks and he nearly lets out a laugh. 

After their conversation yesterday, he doubts any shrink could iron out their marriage when its very fabric is ripped and torn and shredded and disintegrating. He only agreed to come with Nancy to this appointment because Social Services requires it of him. The last thing they need is for Brian to be taken away because of their negligence or lack of commitment.

“Yes, but divorce counselling is also an option,” Dr. Moritz explains.

The suggestions sting in different ways. Their marriage may be irreparable, but their separation is tentative like a septic wound. Bill doesn’t want to make any decisions that would cauterize the flesh so hastily that it burns or prod it so much that it reopens and begins to bleed again. He needs time for the emotional scars to fade before he can confront the social or financial ones a divorce would bring on. 

“Nancy and I are separating,” Bill says, the words foreign in his mouth but somehow easier to say than expected. 

Nancy looks at Bill, finally meeting his eyes, before turning away again. She shakes her head. “Thank you for your consideration, Dr. Moritz, but no.” 

“Very well,” Dr. Moritz says. His expression softens from apprehension into understanding. “Have you told Brian yet?”

“No,” Nancy says. 

“We thought we should wait for the right time,” Bill adds.

“Well, children are very intuitive,” Dr. Moritz says. “I wouldn't be surprised if Brian has already picked up on some of what’s been going on. Sometimes delaying the inevitable can cause more confusion and more harm to the child.”

“I can talk to him,” Bill assures.

“It would be best if you told him together.” 

Nancy nods. “We can do that.”

“Good.” Dr. Moritz smiles and Bill assumes the appointment is coming to a close, but Dr. Moritz continues talking. “Before you leave, I think I should reiterate how important it is that Brian remains in regular contact with his father. Scheduled play dates perhaps, at least until you have a formal custody agreement.” 

Bill feels the air empty from his lungs at the mention of custody. If Nancy wanted a divorce she could bring her case to court and cut off all contact Bill has with Brian. Considering how absent he has been the past few months, it would be easy, but he hopes enough understanding has remained from their marriage to prevent that from happening. If Nancy ever loved him at all, she would know losing Brian would devastate him. For all of her faults, she wants what is best for their son. 

With that, Nancy smiles stiffly. “We understand.” 

Brian is fiddling with the edge of a National Geographic magazine when Bill and Nancy emerge from Dr. Moritz’s office. He gets to his feet and silently joins them, gravitating towards Nancy. She gently squeezes his shoulder.

“Do you want to spend some time with dad this afternoon?” she asks. Her cheerfulness is forced, but Bill appreciates the effort. 

Brian looks up at him, eyes round and devoid of recognition. After a moment, he nods and Bill stoops down to ruffle his hair. He drops a kiss onto the top of his head. 

“Hey, kid. You hungry?” 

*

Holden sits at the foot of his bed.

The sheets are rumpled from tossing and turning all night, but his suit is well ironed. His diagonally striped tie is perfectly centred in the middle of his collar, laid pin straight down the length of his baby blue button-down.

He has fifteen minutes until he has to meet Gregg in the hallway so they can make their way from the hotel to the penitentiary, but he spends most of those fifteen minutes staring at the pill bottle in his hand instead of gathering his notes or checking their recording equipment.

He can barely keep his hands from shaking as he rolls the bottle between his fingers, listening to the medication clatter against the neon orange plastic.

Twelve left.

He never used to be like this. Something has undeniably shifted inside him since he found himself in that southern hospitality restaurant staring at a plate of collard greens, since he carried those crosses, since Bill tore into him on that riverbank as another young boy was scraped from the sand. He feels askew and out of place like his skin no longer fits him. Maybe it was never really his all along.

Fifteen minutes. 

Holden dreads having to walk into that precinct and smell the smoke and the sewage, hear the metallic rattling of fetters and handcuffs and the scratchy sound of mechanisms turning in the tape machine as he switches it on and the light blinks red. He feels jittery like he did the first time he met Kemper. His anxious fingertips search for something to do. His foot taps needlessly against the floor. 

Back then, he could expel his nervousness in a more productive way, fixing his hair in the mirror or talking back to Bill while he blatantly ignored his advice. Now all Holden wants to do is drug himself enough to elude the panic but no so much that he falls asleep mid-interview. He considers it, then reconsiders it, but it seems too risky to self-medicate without knowing the proper dosage.

He tosses the Valium back into his suitcase and shrugs on his suit jacket, then finds Gregg waiting just outside his door.

“Ready?” Holden asks.

“I am if you are.”

The penitentiary smells like stale urine and cheap cigarettes, like half-cooked starchy cafeteria food and eye-watering bleach. Having shown their badges and handed in their guns, they wait at the entrance to the precinct, standing at opposite walls. The barred door stretches between them, painted maroon to hide the rust. The paint flakes away onto the dirty concrete floor. 

Holden searches for Bill’s usual smoke rings swirling in the stuffy air, dissipating into a shapeless haze the closer they drift towards him, but he sees only Gregg. The tape recorder and microphone are perched under his arm. 

Gregg looks more outwardly nervous than he should considering this is his third interview after Henley and Bateson. Not to mention, Eddie Carroll is much less prolific than Corll and more by-the-book than the so-called bag murders. Holden has heard the tapes. He knows Gregg gets choked up, stiffens the moment his authority is questioned, but it will probably mean little in the broad scheme of their research if the interview is unrevealing. Holden chose Eddie Carroll for a reason; loose-lipped and straightforward, a sexual degenerate with a probable low IQ. 

Even so, anxiety burrows in his bones. It makes its home there, digs in its nails. Holden feels his heart accelerate. He grips the wall behind him for a brief moment before letting go again. Gregg looks at him with narrowed eyes.

The gate finally buzzes and the bars retract with a deafening clank. A tall, red-bearded prison guard dressed in the typical blues guides them into the precinct. He watches skeptically as they set up their equipment at one of the many tables.

The penitentiary was built in 1836 and it looks like it. Despite previous renovations, the precinct is rundown like so many others Holden has visited. If feels like a basement, like the room has sunken deep down into the moist and wormy earth. The air is damp and cool and brownish stains from water damage twist the ceiling and corners of the walls like malformed wallpaper patterns. The only window is small and barred and obscured with a dirty film of dust that looks like it could be pulled back in one piece.

Holden and Gregg get situated on the same side of the table. Gregg checks the equipment then gives Holden the go-ahead nod. Holden looks back at the guard.

“You can send him in.”

Several minutes later, Holden hears the rhythmic clinking of chains as they swing from side to side. Hollow footsteps slap against the concrete. The gate slides open and the guard steps inside, pulling Eddie Carrol with him by the elbow.

From a distance, Holden can see that his prison uniform drowns him. He’s tall, almost as tall as the guard, and much too thin, all sharp edges and knobbly joints underneath the stained blue fabric. His head is bowed but not in shame or embarrassment. His body language is almost coy, his back half turned so neither Holden nor Gregg can get a good look at him. 

“Cuffs,” Holden says, tapping on his own wrist.

Carroll cockily sticks his hands out and the guard reluctantly unlocks the handcuffs. He finally turns to face them, rubbing at his wrists. His face is gaunt and macerated like his skin is being pulled tight around his skull. His irises are so blue they blend in with the whites of his eyes, his stare perpetually glazed over. Bruises mottle the left side of his face in a crescent shape that stretches from cheekbone to brow, greenish greyish purple in colour like the sky before a thunderstorm. 

Carroll catches Holden staring and points to his face with a long, jagged, yellow fingernail. 

“I ain’t dangerous,” he says and his speech is intonated by a subtle south Missouri accent, tongue lazy in his mouth. “I just talk too much.” 

Holden motions to the empty chair in front of them. “Have a seat.”

Carroll does just that, shuffling across the room like he still has shackles around his ankles. He sits forward in his chair with a pronounced slouch, his legs crossed one over the other. He looks relaxed but only performatively so, his hands down at his sides but his body language otherwise guarded and closed off.

“Do you mind if we record this conversation?” Holden begins to say, finger hovering over the button, sliding the microphone over, but Carroll interrupts him.

“Got a cigarette?”

Gregg and Holden share a look. Carroll sighs. He rises from his chair suddenly and Holden spots Gregg flinch. Luckily, Carroll has his back turned.

“Didn’t realize the FBI hired Mennonites,” Carroll grumbles under his breath as he makes his way back to the gate. He runs a hand over the bars, then gently jostles them. They creak. “Hey, can I bum a smoke?” 

“Get outta here, Carroll,” comes the voice of the guard on the other side. “Do I look like one of your cronies?”

Carroll makes a tut-tut sound, tongue against his teeth. “Remember what the warden said. Last time I snitched, I got special privileges.”

Each syllable is over-pronounced, languid like molasses. The guard chuckles and hands him a cigarette through the bars. Carroll perches it between his smirking lips and a match sneaks by to light it. He takes a slow drag, savouring the taste, then strolls back to the table.

Two minutes in and Holden is already set on edge. His anxiety ebbs and flows with his irritation. He presses record on the machine as Carroll sits back down. The tape spins and the mechanics hum in the otherwise noiseless room. Holden lets Gregg take the lead.

“Mr. Carroll, my name is Agent Smith and this is Agent Ford. We are conducting interviews with men who are convicted of violent offences,” he begins. “With your permission, we will be asking you about your family history, antecedent behaviour, and thought patterns surrounding the crimes.”

Carroll smirks. He exhales and the smoke that pours from his nostrils smells acrid and sour like rotting fruit. “Go on then.”

Gregg clears his throat. “It is our understanding that you were convicted for the rape and murder of five women in the summer of 1972,” he says, his tone steady and analytical. “Is that correct?”

“My guilty plea says as much,” Carroll says, stiffening. “You got that in your file?”

He points to the stack in front of Gregg with the butt of his cigarette. It reads like a challenge, but more than that it reads like disdain for their procedures. Holden can already tell Carroll likes authority figures if they have something to offer him, an opportunity to cash in his helpfulness for a favour at a later date like he did with the cigarette.

“Why is it that you wanted to talk to us today?” Holden asks, clasping his hands together. “What can we do for you?”

“I wanted to get me outta solitary for an afternoon I guess.” Carroll shrugs and he seems to relax ever so slightly. “Sometimes they give me newspapers in exchange for good behaviour, you know how it is, and I read about what happened down in Georgia.” He looks at Holden. His unblinking gaze stays there for a disconcertingly long time. “That was you folks.”

Holden swallows. He feels his pulse quicken in his wrists. “Yes, it was.”

“Awful what happened to them kids.” Carroll shakes his head. He takes another drag of his cigarette and watches the smoke rise to the leaky ceiling. “Bodies tossed into the river like scrap.”

Gregg furrows his brows. He quickly flips through the file in his hands. “Mr. Carroll, it says here that one of your victims was a fifteen-year-old girl. Cathy Henderson?”

“She was just as grown as the rest of them,” Carroll says with a chuckle that cuts through the silence like a dull razor. “And I dressed them up real nice.” He leans forward across the table and his eyes land on Holden again. Holden can see his eyelashes, blond and almost translucent. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Then Carroll leans back, cigarette between the gap in his teeth. Unease fills up the room as Gregg tenses, probably thinking of his own daughters back in Virginia getting off the bus on their way home from school, watching cartoons, doing homework at the kitchen table. 

The hum of the tape recorder seems to grow louder. Holden stares at the wall ahead of him until it fades into the surrounding ambience. His panic edges closer but passes over his head.

“Matthew 10:28,” Gregg eventually replies. “Are you religious?”

Carroll looks impressed. He smiles as he reaches into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulls out a Bible not much larger than a pack of cigarettes. The golden lettering scrawled across the black leather cover is stained and chipping away. The tissue paper thin pages are curled from water damage, but Carroll appears proud as he sets it down on the table.

“Yes, sir.”

“May I?” Gregg asks, motioning towards the Bible.

Carroll nods. As Gregg scans the pages scrawled with notations in smudged pencil, Holden tries not to let his confusion reveal itself on his face. A Bible-thumper is usually the last person he would pin down as a serial rapist or a lust murderer. His curiosity prickles at the back of his neck.

“Did you find God while incarcerated, Mr. Carroll?” Holden asks.

Carroll turns to him and his grin fades. His jaw is set, the ball of it like a hardened stone near his pinkish throat.

“No, I have known Him all my life,” he snaps. “And stop calling me Mr. Carroll. My name is Eddie. Mr. Carroll was my daddy.”

Holden raises his eyebrows. “Was?”

Carroll hesitates and his gaze drops to his lap where he twists his cigarette between his index finger and thumb. “He died a long time ago.” 

Gregg sets the Bible back down and scribbles something on his notepad. “Were you close to your father, Eddie?”

“Yes, sir. He used to take me fishing every year, down in Douglas County.”

“How old were you when he died?” 

“I must have been about eighteen, sir.” 

Holden interjects. “Was he absent in any way while you were growing up?”

Carroll is slower to answer this time. “No, not of his own doing.” 

“How is that?” 

Carroll leaves the question unanswered long enough to take two more drags of his cigarette. He flicks ash onto the table, then sweeps it away with his shirt sleeve. He seems distracted or maybe just avoidant. 

“My daddy worked the fields, sold his labour to farms across the county, whoever needed him. He worked for cheap, just enough money for his liquor and my school clothes,” Carroll says, his tone of voice suddenly void of its initial arrogance. “One day, he drank too much, fell asleep in the sun while he was tilling the land. When he woke up, he was never the same."

“What do you mean never the same?” Holden asks. 

“I dunno. He started seeing strange things, screaming at nothing. The doctors said he had some kind of aneurysm out in that field, so they locked him up in the asylum a couple towns over.”

“Did you ever see your father again?” Gregg chimes in.

“Every Wednesday I hitch-hiked to visit him, but most days he just looked right through me.” 

Holden frowns. He feels a change in the air as Carroll appears less hostile. His defences lower a bit more.

“What about your mother, Eddie?” Gregg asks. “Was she around?”

Carroll shifts and his shoulders collapse inwards. He crosses his arms over each other in his lap. “Never knew her. Only seen a couple of pictures. She was a whore. Died after I was born.”

Gregg retreats, but Holden takes the opportunity to push the question further. “Your mother was a prostitute?”

“Yeah, what of it?” Carroll bites back.

Holden and Gregg share a look, a look that says they know they have something. Holden feels excitement underneath his skin, but the thrill of it is slightly dulled from the monotony of yet another textbook case of childhood trauma that Wendy can add to her statistical analysis. The absent father. The hated mother. Always the mother.

“Eddie, do you have trouble with women?” Gregg asks. “Sexually? Emotionally?” 

Carroll laughs. “What kind of question is that? Hell, women love me. They loved my daddy too. After he got locked up, I spent most of my time around whores like he did. You know how whores are. Lost my virginity at age thirteen.”

“Really?” Holden lets a smirk form on his lips as he fakes being impressed. The outward tension eases, but his stomach churns. “How did that happen?”

Carroll only smirks and slowly the pieces begin to fall into place. Holden wants to ask him about his crimes, but it seems redundant when Carroll is already laying his cards on the table, probably without even knowing it. Holden is less interested in the how—they know the how from the transcripts of his confession taken down in the interrogation room that was read aloud in court—but the why eludes them. 

“Do you think that, maybe, your upbringing led you to think of women as disposable?” The why is what urges Holden forward. “Quick-fucks and nothing else? Like your mother? The girls you grew up around?”

“Cripple that and walk it by me slow, Agent Ford,” Carroll says with a mucousy snort, hiding his vulnerabilities with impish pretension like he did when the guard first brought him in.

Holden persists, his voice dissonantly soft-spoken as he asks, “Is that why you raped and murdered those women, Eddie?”

The question hangs there in the pause. Carroll curls his lip inwards in a sneer, licks the flat of his thumb then puts his cigarette out against it, ash dying his skin black. The bruises on his face look all the more prominent as the lines deepen around his mouth and forehead. 

“You said you never really knew your mother,” Holden continues, “but when you close your eyes and picture those women, do they all have her face?”

Carroll shifts forward, moving to stand, and for a second Holden thinks the interview is over, that he pushed too hard and too soon just to get this whole thing over with, but then Carroll speaks. 

“Their faces, all of them, they haunt me,” he says as he crowds the table, the legs of his chair squealing against the concrete like pigs sent to the slaughter. He addresses Holden only. “They haunt me just as much as they haunt you, Agent Ford. When you close your eyes, do you see those kids, floating in that river like rag dolls?” 

Holden feels panic tug at his limbs, grasping his shoulders like the embrace of an old friend. He forgets to breathe for a moment as adrenaline floods his system. His muscles contract involuntarily like his body wants to move independent from the rest of him, force him towards the door. He fixes his tie underneath the table but never breaks eye contact. It feels like a game. 

“With all due respect, it would be best if we stayed on task,” Gregg interjects, clambering to regain control of the interview. He shoots an uneasy glance at Holden. “Agent Ford and I—”

Holden holds up his hand. “Let him talk.” 

There is a sick and strange thrill in letting your vulnerabilities be laid bare by someone who has actually torn flesh and broken skin. It reminds Holden of Kemper, how the stagnant air of the hospital room had putrefied in the moment before his arms snaked around him.

For some reason, Holden craves that hurt again. Warped beyond immediate recognition, it was the same hurt he felt with Bill in his empty house, sore and stripped away, where the panic had found him again. 

“When the mountains move, Agent Ford,” Carroll begins with the invocation of a preacher, “the kings of the earth, and all the great men and the rich men, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every free man will hide themselves in the dens of the mountain.” 

His grin is impious, though Holden can tell he believes himself to be a righteous man. Each word is more purposeful than the last as Holden decides to stop outrunning the inevitable and lets the panic creep up behind him.

“And they said to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us!” Carroll continues and his inflection is grand and soaring. “Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne. For the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand?”

Holden says nothing. He hears his heartbeat in his eardrums and the corners of his vision blacken. Sweat breaks out down the length of his spine as he readies himself to stand and run towards the gate.

He looks for Bill but Bill is two hundred miles away and all he has left now is this; the interviews and the killers who seek him out, a drawer full of tapes wound and unwound, and his empathy that seems to eat away at everyone’s insides but his own.

“So I ask, agent,” Carroll continues, “if the spirits of the dead follow you and I just the same, which one of us is guilty?”

Holden abruptly gets to his feet as a phantom hand reaches into his ribcage to rapidly pulsate his heart. His breath is shallow and uneven, his lungs shrivelled sacks. It feels like his consciousness is watching him from outside his body as he makes his way to the gate as steadily as he can, trying not to give himself away. 

His legs threaten to give out from underneath him. He thinks he hears his name. He thinks he hears someone laugh. The guard regards him with hesitation but lets him out into the hallway. 

As soon as the gate shuts again, bars clanging like a clap of thunder, Holden collects his badge and his gun from the attendant. He leaves through the main doors, collapsing onto the pavement as soon as the open-air hits him.

*

Bill loosens his tie.

He can already feel a sunburn blooming on the back of his neck, a watermelon pink line drawn above the stiff collar of his button-down shirt. Brian sits beside him on the bench, nibbling at his ham and cheese sandwich. His legs swinging underneath him are too short to touch the ground. 

Summer is in full force and the park is all the more busy for it. Newlyweds push strollers on the sidewalk while weary parents supervise their toddlers as they fill their pockets with stones and scrape their knees on the pavement. There are school-age children blowing bubbles halfway across the soccer fields and teenagers on bicycles zipping down the bike paths. The sky is cloudless and Bill can see strokes of heat warping the tarmac. 

He leaves his own sandwich mostly untouched, opting for his usual lunch of two or three cigarettes. Brian stares at the children climbing up the jungle gym or pushing their friends on the swings, saying nothing only looking. The parents glance at him with apprehension, most likely wondering why he refuses to join in with the others. Nancy would probably give them hell, but Bill ignores them, adjusting his sunglasses on his face.

“If you want to go play you can play,” he tells Brian as he butts out his nubby cigarette and fishes around for another, but Brian is unreceptive as usual. 

He stares at the swings a couple girls have abandoned to go play on the monkey bars instead, watching as the seats fly up into the air back and forth as the chains clank and creak and they finally slow.

As hyperactive children whoop and holler and chase each other up and down the grass, Bill feels guilty for allowing Brian to just sit here without joining in, although forcing him to play after what happened would probably be just as cruel.

Growing up, Bill never had any trouble with kids his age. He got in playground fights sometimes, other times got the strap for talking in class, but he was always good at making friends. He was good at sports too, good at making others laugh, good at grabbing the attention of the girls. He always thought his son would be the same, but Bill understands now that shaping a child in your own image is a selfish thing to do. 

“Come on,” Bill says, stretching out his hand. “I want to show you something.”

Brian takes it.

They sit by the river instead, away from the overwhelming noise and activity of the park. Brian sits with his legs crossed on the dock, still picking away at his sandwich. The freckles on his nose are starting to multiply the longer he stays out in the sun. Bill probably should have brought sunscreen, but he can handle the blowback if Nancy complains. 

“Good place to go fishing,” Bill says.

Brian looks at him. There are crumbs on his cheeks and Bill brushes them away, wishing he knew what Brian was thinking. If he does talk anymore, Nancy and Dr. Moritz are the only ones who hear it. 

Bill flicks ash into the water and watches as the chalky white bits get swept away with the current. He should have protected him. Whatever happened in that park, in that basement of that unsold house, whether Brian had a hand in it or not, Bill should have protected him.

His guilt is a constant, so constant that it feels like an irremovable part of him at this point. If someone were to scramble his insides and rip it out, there would be a gaping hole left in its place. At least the guilt fills it with something. The numbness is much worse. It was his numbness towards his job and towards Nancy and towards his son that backed him into this corner in the first place. Now that he has lost Nancy—and maybe Holden too—Brian is all he has left.

They sit there for a while, enjoying the sound of birds chirping between the tree branches and the river splashing against speckled rocks near the banks. Eventually, Bill hears quacking as a family of ducks approaches the dock, their orange feet paddling underneath the greenish water, feathers wet and shiny in the sun. Bill tears off a piece of his uneaten sandwich and offers it to Brian.

“You think they’re hungry?”

Brian almost smiles as he takes the piece of bread and tosses it off the dock. The ducks quack happily, splashing around in the river. His eyes look a little brighter as one of the smaller ducklings, still covered in downy feathers, swims towards the soggy piece of sandwich and snatches it up in its beak. 

Bill gently pats Brian on the shoulder. “Dad loves you, you got that?”

After a moment, Brian nods.

As Brian tears the rest of the sandwich into little bits and throws it to the ducks, Bill thinks of Holden. He tries to keep him far from his mind, but it never really works, especially not when the sun is out and the air is still and Brian is finally laughing.

He remembers how Holden had sat with him on the carpet floor, legs crossed, mirroring him like he might one of their subjects but obviously with kinder intentions. Knowing him, Holden would probably be good with Brian. Maybe he would know how to get through to him, pick up on something Bill might have missed.

Brian eventually runs out of bread and sits back beside Bill, watching the ducks carefully, a look of fascination on his face. 

They linger a bit longer before finally swimming away, but Brian stays beside Bill, leaning against his arm.

*

The drive to the airport is punctuated by silence.

Holden looks out the window, the Valium burning a hole in his stomach lining as Gregg attempts small talk like he always does. Holden says nothing, too embarrassed to speak, and the soft rock song playing on the radio takes the place of any response he can muster. 

The interview is left unmentioned even when they reach their designated terminal and drop their luggage onto the floor. They sit with one seat between them, waiting to board their flight back to Virginia. 

Holden itches to review the tape, his anxiety now a distant obstruction at the back of his mind. He wants to see whether his panic can be heard through the audio or not, whether his sudden disappearance comes off as unprofessional as he thinks it will, but the bag holding their recording equipment has already been checked in.

“We can lose the tape,” Gregg says, almost on queue, and it comes out a little too quickly, stilted like he has been holding it in since they left the precinct. 

Holden turns to him, eyebrows stitched together. “What?”

“What Carroll said to you back there . . .” Gregg shakes his head. “If you don’t want Bill and Wendy to hear it, we can lose the tape, say there was a malfunction and we had to transcribe the interview by hand, or maybe we can just trim the last couple minutes off.”

“Gregg, nothing happened,” Holden says, in disbelief that he would even suggest something like that after he ratted on them about the Speck tape. His arrogance pours through to mask his humiliation. “The interview was over. Carroll was being nonsensical.”

“Really? Then what the hell was that?” Gregg snaps. Holden has never seen him angry before, but even then his anger is subdued by his wholesome, family man persona. “Carroll was being very hostile and you left me in there by myself. He was quoting _The Book of_ _Revelation,_ for chrissake. You better have a good reason for it.”

Holden sighs. “No, not really.”

“Look, Holden,” Gregg says firmly. “When we get back to Quantico, I can edit the tape. We can say Carroll dropped out of the interview early. Nothing he said in those last couple minutes has much to do with our research anyways.”

He looks displeased, but his eyes are kind as he stares Holden down. Holden feels like a petulant child being soothed and placated after having a temper tantrum in the supermarket. 

Could Gregg tell what was going on with him when he walked out? His insistence on editing the tape instead of letting him face the consequences seems to indicate as much, but Gregg is usually so oblivious that the implication catches Holden off guard. 

Holden opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. The last thing he needs is another lecture from Bill or Wendy about professionalism or proper FBI conduct or the importance of standardizing their interview procedure. It would reflect poorly on the entire unit if Ted heard what happened—let alone listened to the tape—and Holden refuses to give Bill the satisfaction of knowing he was right to be apprehensive about Holden conducting an interview soon after Atlanta. 

Realizing he has backed himself into a corner, Holden relents, not agreeing to it but not disagreeing either. Gregg must take it as a yes because he smirks. 

“Consider us even,” he says, “for OPR.”

Holden regards him with half-surprise and half-amusement. He crosses his arms. “If you say so.” 

Several minutes later, a voice crackles through the intercom. “Now boarding Flight 227 eastbound to Charlottesville, Virginia at Gate 14.” 

Finally, they head home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple notes:
> 
> 1\. Don't feed bread to ducks because it's bad for them, but it's the 80s and I doubt people were that concerned about duck welfare back then.
> 
> 2\. Reminder that Eddie Carroll is fictional, so don't worry. No one died in the making of this interview.
> 
> 3\. Thank you to Frankie for looking this over and to everyone on the Mindhunter discord for the reassurances and good advice!
> 
> Let me know what you thought! 
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://fordtench.tumblr.com/)


	8. absolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the two month hiatus! I'm back.

On Sunday, Bill finds himself in his office—his old office.

The brass lamp is bowed on his desk, its knotted cord still plugged into the wall. It weaves through the dust bunnies that nestle in the cracks of the floor. Bill wonders why no one has taken his place in the months the office has been empty. But as he turns, he sees Ed Kemper's cards taped along the door jamb like a territorial sign. He doubts anyone but Holden would want to claim them now: a bittersweet reminder of their work together. They stay fastened to the wall for their ink to fade and their cheery greetings to stare out into nothing.

Bill flicks the light on and marvels at the emptiness; the rest of the office is emptier still. He figured working through the weekend would be the best way to keep his mind occupied. The hotel he’s been staying at is more comfortable than his house, but all there is to do is sleep. Sleep and smoke and watch daytime television.

Holden usually works a few hours on weekends—at least since his break up with Debbie left him with nothing better to do—but he’s a no-show. Bill considers calling him for the second time, to ask how the interview went. Halfway to the phone, he stops himself. The way they ended things has left him hesitant, afraid that Holden might not pick up if he was on the other line.

Bill straightens and turns off the light. He leaves the door open a crack, wavering on its hinges. His nameplate remains glued beside the door like the cards. Bill lets it lie.

Several hours pass.

In the early afternoon, he desperately needs a refill from the coffee dispensary machine. He hears footsteps down the hall, then peers over the corner to see Gregg shuffling out of the elevator. He hauls an armful of recording equipment with him. 

“How did it go?” Bill asks.

Gregg startles when he sees Bill standing around the corner. His grip on the microphone perched in his left hand slackens enough for the cord to untangle. It dangles beneath it.

“Oh, Bill, hi. Um, it was good,” Gregg says, catching himself and rewinding the cord in his palm. “What are you doing here? You don’t usually come in on weekends.”

“Only if I have to. I had some stuff to finish up.” Bill removes his mug from the machine and stares into the inky coffee, the steam billowing. “So, what was Carroll like?”

“Unpredictable to say the least, but we got what we wanted from him.” Gregg smiles politely. Then, his mouth tightens in a grimace, eyes flicking downwards. “He kept quoting Bible verses.” 

Bill snorts. “Bible verses?”

“Yeah, it was pretty blasphemous.”

Gregg sounds serious enough for Bill to hold in his disbelief. He clears his throat and takes a sip of his coffee, gritty and bitter, then tenses his fingers around his mug. The lukewarm heat seeps into his skin, goading him. The question bubbles up before he can push it down.

“How was Holden?”

Bill only realizes it must be a strange thing to say once the words have already left his mouth. Gregg looks at him knowingly, a look that sets Bill on edge. 

Gregg gestures as if to wave Bill off. “Holden was Holden.” 

Bill chews on the inside of his cheek as his unease grows. Maybe he should call. Or, better yet, listen to the interview before putting his concern out there to be acknowledged and dismissed. “Can I hear the tape?” 

“It got a bit chewed up in the machine,” Gregg answers a little too quickly. It sounds like he had the excuse on the tip of his tongue all the way down to the basement. He raps his knuckle against the tape recorder. “I have to repair the cassette, but I can do it by Monday. I can have the transcript ready by then as well.”

Bill gives him a curt nod. “All right.”

With a click of his teeth, Gregg disappears into the main office. Coffee in hand, Bill goes back to his desk, an inkling of suspicion gnawing at his stomach. He busies himself for the rest of the afternoon, reading up on a hefty pile of case files to avoid another argument about classification.

Several hours pass.

At five, Bill wanders into the empty main office to look for a file on George Putz. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a manila folder sticking out of the drawer of Gregg's desk. Bill walks over and jiggles the handle. The drawer slides open, unlocked.

“Carroll” is scrawled in black marker across the front of the folder. The handwriting is flat and almost illegible, the letters melding together into one thick line: Holden. 

Without much consideration, Bill tears open the folder and a cassette falls into his palm. He inspects it beneath the desk light. It looks fine, the tape perfectly wound inside the clear plastic shell. Bill rifles around for a spare tape player and a pair of headphones in another cabinet, then sits at a spare desk.

He presses play.

“Mr. Carroll, my name is Agent Smith and this is Agent Ford. We are conducting interviews—”

Bill hammers his finger down on the fast-forward button. The voices speed up and then slow again as he lets go. Holden is speaking now, his voice pouring out clear and soft from the headphones. Bill feels his stomach swim before settling.

“Why is it that you wanted to talk to us today? What can we do for you?”

“I wanted to get me outta solitary for an afternoon I guess . . .”

Bill listens, arms crossed and back stiff. Like Gregg said, Carroll is unpredictable, rambly, never quite on the same mark as anyone else. Bill has trouble deciphering why Gregg seemed so hesitant to speak in detail until Carroll begins reciting Bible verses. His voice raises and the tape crackles in response. It buzzes like an insect in Bill's ears, pressing his unease close to the surface. 

Holden begins pushing Carroll. His questions become harder to maneuver and avoid. Even through the audio, Bill can feel the space in the room shrink. He stares at the tape winding in the machine, only halfway used up.

“When you close your eyes, do you see those kids, floating in that river like rag dolls?”

Bill feels a lump harden in his throat. The allusion to Atlanta brings about a nausea he has to force down. There is a pause where Holden is quiet. Something makes Bill's arm hairs stand on end, like a fight or flight response. He wants to shut off the machine, but he keeps focused, muscles tensing with a sense of foreboding.

“Agent Ford and I—”

“Let him talk.”

Carroll continues, breaking away into some evangelist rant. He addresses Holden and Holden only. Bill clenches his molars hard enough that they squeak. He can imagine the scene: a dirty room, a picnic table with the tape recorder humming on top, Holden on one side and this smarmy asshole on the other. Bill knows he should have been there to back Holden up despite his protests. 

It was too soon after Atlanta, too soon for Holden and too soon for his recovery. 

“So I ask, agent, if the spirits of the dead follow you and I just the same, which one of us is guilty?”

There is silence, then the sound of a chair clattering as it pushes across the concrete floor. Bill hears a snicker from Carroll, a voice of concern from Gregg, then the faint metallic crash of a barred gate closing.

“Guess the FBI hires pussies _and_ Mennonites,” Carroll says.

The smirk in his voice is audible before the audio gets cut off. Bill allows the silence to play out. The tape continues to wind forwards until the machine stutters and stops. He removes the headphones from his ears with stiff fingers. They threaten to shake with anger: anger at Holden for being reckless enough to put himself in harm's way and anger at himself for letting him do it. 

He should have been there. 

Bill stands and leans against the desk with his arms crossed. He eyes the phone for the umpteenth time, recites the number in his head like it might finally push him to call. Then, he reminds himself of an address.

Bill recalls backhand comments about Valium and babysitting and pretending to be fine. He walks back to his office and grabs his car keys from his desk and his suit jacket from the back of his chair. 

The tape is tucked away in his pocket.

*

Routine—routine is the only thing that keeps Holden from spiralling once he settles into the familiarity of his apartment. His appetite has been abysmal since he got back, but he forces himself to eat. He reverts to tidying what little needs to be tidied, jogging every morning, looking over his notes even if it makes his stomach roll. He even goes grocery shopping for the first time in weeks.

He thinks about Bill. He thinks about the pavement outside of the penitentiary, how hot it felt pressed against his knees, making marks. At this point, he feels more ashamed than anything, even if his shame is isolated to a tape no one will hear.

As the water begins boiling over the lip of the pot, he turns the stove off, his arm hairs sticky with steam. The afternoon news is humming softly in the background when the phone rings. Holden lets it ring out, turning up the volume on the TV to mask it. A mustachioed newscaster relays stock information and financial news. Dow is down 0.81 percent.

As the program cuts to commercial, several minutes later, Holden hears a fist pound against his front door. He stands up from the couch and peers over. The knocking continues.

With a sigh, Holden unlatches the deadbolt and twists the knob. He takes a step back out of surprise when he sees Bill standing there. He’s close enough that his toe is inching off the welcome mat.

Holden tries to swallow down his confusion. It reveals itself between his furrowed brows. “Bill? Who let you up?” 

Bill says nothing at first. He glances at Holden from across the threshold. His eyes appear unsure as if he’s in the midst of re-evaluating why he came. “A neighbour of yours recognized me,” he manages. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

“Oh,” Holden says. He recalls the last and only time Bill was at his apartment. “Do you, uh, want to come in?”

Bill nods.

Holden steps aside, then closes the door behind Bill when he walks in. Bill stands awkwardly in the foyer, hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit jacket, fidgety without a cigarette to nurse. Dressed for the office, his ugly, geometric tie is only slightly loosened around his neck. Bill usually avoids working weekends unless he has to.

“What are you doing here, Bill?” Holden asks with unease. His mind wanders to Nancy and Brian, the house, the ultimatum. “Is everything—”

“Yeah, everything is fine,” Bill interrupts, dismissive but unconvincing.

Holden raises an eyebrow. His concern inadvertently comes off as skepticism, even cockiness. “Then why are you here?”

The discomfort is palpable between them. Despite several days apart, the bitterness from their last conversation refuses to dissipate. Holden can taste it in the air, thick and chalky like pollution and car exhaust. Bill sighs, then reaches into his pocket. He produces a tape, the label marked by hasty handwriting. Holden recognizes it immediately. The translucent plastic catches the light as Bill holds it up to allow him a better look. Holden blanches; Bill tosses it to him. 

It almost falls to the floor before Holden can catch it against his chest. His fingers tense, suddenly clammy. He regrets saving it immediately. Maybe letting it fracture into pieces against the hardwood would simplify things.

“Care to explain?” Bill asks. 

Holden turns the tape over in his hand, biding his time to come up with a good excuse, any excuse. Bill keeps his eyes on him and Holden blanks, biting on the inside of his cheek. “Did Gregg talk to you?”

Bill shakes his head, lines deepening in his face, and Holden feels his stomach twist. 

“So, what, you went through his desk?” Holden says. He waits for a defence, but Bill offers no such thing. Hurt and anger stirs in his chest. “Jesus Christ, Bill—” 

“Are you two are partners in crime or something now?” Bill says. He raises his voice, his words too barbed to be accidental. “What the hell happened in that interview?”

Holden scoffs and ignores the latter question. “What was I supposed to do? Humiliate myself in front of the department for the umpteenth time?”

“Since when do you care what the fucking department thinks of you?”

“Since we were sitting ducks for most of the Atlanta investigation,” Holden bites back. “Since I realized Ted asked you to keep an eye on me.”

“But why hide it from me?”

Bill sounds hurt, which causes Holden to falter. Some of the vitriol in his voice softens. “You know why.”

“Remind me.” 

It registers as a plea. Holden runs a hand over his face. He pulls at his cheeks that are only one more missed shave away from bristling with stubble. The tape feels heavy in his limp hand, so he sets it down on the coffee table. 

“Best case scenario, you heard the tape and said I told you so. Worst case scenario, you lost what little faith in me you had left,” Holden admits. He surprises himself with his own honesty. It weighs on his shoulders, warning him not to reveal too much or show his cards. “Face it, Bill, you and the rest of the department are about an inch away from concluding I’ve forgotten how to do my damn job.”

Bill takes a step towards him, but his hands remain still at his sides, like he would reach out if only Holden asked him to. “Holden, quit this melodramatic bullshit. I never lost faith in you. You know that.”

“Then, what the fuck was Atlanta?” Holden spits. He refuses Bill by staying where he is and pointedly looking away. “You lied to me for months and when I finally wanted to know what the hell was going on, you told me to go fuck myself. Not in so many words, but the sentiment was plain as day. What was I supposed to think?”

“Holden, before you left for Missouri I tried getting through to you,” Bill says. “You passed me up.”

“Because you were treating me like a fucking inconvenience.”

“Holden, I never meant—”

“You should go.”

The demand is instinctual, sudden yet finalizing but not quite sincere. Holden feels a pang of regret as realization passes over Bill. It shifts his posture from antagonistic to subjugated. The tension held in his shoulders loosens and forces him to sink inwards. Holden takes a step towards the door, his hand reaching for the knob, but Bill is moving with him, taking the same step. He closes his fist around Holden’s wrist. The touch is gentle with enough pressure to steady him, holding him there.

Holden looks up at Bill, but his focus is on the warmth of his hand. The calluses hardened around his fingertips are somehow familiar. His grip on the doorknob goes slack. “Bill—"

“No,” Bill says. “Not until you understand.”

“What is there to understand?” Holden asks. 

“That I care about you, all right?” Bill lets go of Holden. His actions and words are always out of sync, never transparent enough for Holden to decipher. “It was a stupid thing to do, letting you dive headfirst into something like that alone. I should have been there to pull you out.”

“Should have been there?” Holden says incredulously. “Bill, a few days ago you told me you were leaving.”

“Well, I changed my mind.” 

For the first time in weeks, Bill sounds sure of himself. Holden drops his gaze. His stomach burns with embarrassment and anger and the kind of tepid apprehension he felt when Bill first kissed him. Holden glances at the tape discarded on the table. It seems like a limp excuse for this kind of confession; Bill is stubborn. He has always been stubborn. But the way he looks now, laid bare and waiting for Holden’s word, it seems like he's willing to bend and break for him. Holden sorts through all the things that might explain what changed in the time they were apart. 

Only one seems to make any sense.

“Did Nancy . . .” 

Holden stops himself mid-sentence, wary of what kind of answer Bill might give. Bill must sense that Holden wants to ask because he distances himself. He turns, stops in the middle of the carpet, then sits down on the sofa. Every movement is hesitant, every decision overthought, like the atmosphere might break apart. His head falls into his hands. He takes a shaky breath, one Holden can just hear over the drone of the television.

Holden follows him into the living room. He stands in front of where Bill is sitting, just within arm’s reach. The sun is setting, casting tangerine streaks onto the floor through the slots in the blinds. Holden knows no explanation is needed, but Bill offers him one anyways. 

“We decided that separating would be best for Brian,” Bill says. 

His voice is steadier than Holden thought it would be. Holden takes a step towards him. The gesture is not enough, so he stoops down, levelling himself with Bill. Bill raises his forehead from his palms. They look at each other. 

“I’m sorry." The guilt pains Holden more than the apology. “I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me, but I am.”

Holden has never seen Bill cry. But there were times when the possibility had been close enough to suffocate. Holden recalls moments, in Atlanta, when they heard another body had been found. Bill would turn away, clutching his cigarette a bit tighter. And whenever Bill called Nancy, his throat sounded strained. Always waning on the precipice of falling apart. 

That is where Holden and Bill are now. On the precipice of what, however, Holden does not know: not until Bill leans forward. He rests a hand on Holden's shoulder. His fingers splay out closer to Holden's neck, grazing into his hair at the crown of his skull. 

Lingering. 

Holden bows his head, maybe a submission, maybe a roundabout way to avoid looking Bill in the eye. 

“It does mean something,” Bill admits, “coming from you.”

He smiles sadly, eyes wet but unrevealing, and Holden leans into him. He wants to find his mouth, rectify everything that has gone wrong between them. Instead, he pulls Bill into a hug. His arms settle around Bill's middle, chin tucked into his shoulder. Bill smells like laundry detergent and cigarettes. Cheap diner coffee, but not whiskey or rum.

Bill presses into him as a reassurance. A hand finds the small of Holden's back where two dimples are intersected by his spine. The touch feels strained and somehow safe: a contradiction. When it comes to Bill, contradictions are all Holden knows. Plagued by the uncertainness of it, Holden pulls away, but Bill catches him with ease. He pulls him forward. 

Their lips are meeting, noses bumping, foreheads pressed together.

Holden’s stomach swoops at the suddenness, surprise bubbling at the back of his throat. It dissipates as he leans into the feeling, the taste, the warmth of skin on unfamiliar skin. This kiss is different from the last: chaste, careful, yet steady and sure. When it breaks—Bill pulling away to catch his breath, his stare fixed, eyes half-lidded, saying everything and nothing—Holden has no time to reconsider what confines he’s testing before his need takes over.

He tugs Bill down again to deepen the kiss, teeth scrapping to nip at his lips. His knees dig into the carpet. With some maneuvering, Bill settles Holden into his lap. His hands are steadying at his waist, but he pauses. 

“Is this what you want?” Bill says, his face creased with concern.

Holden knows Bill is asking something else, giving him a chance to evaluate the consequences before they cross the line in the sand. Bill knows what this could mean if anyone worth a damn found out. He probably knows better than anyone. All things considered, Holden should say no to protect them both. But he cannot acknowledge anything but the way Bill is looking at him and the erection straining against his thigh. 

He nods, swallows down his apprehension. “Yes.”

There is the metallic clank of a belt unbuckling as Holden reaches between them, the soft exhale of breath. The jagged edge of a zipper digs into the side of his hand as he touches Bill who stifles a groan against his shoulder. 

Holden moves, tentative until his grip adjusts and his rhythm settles. He feels like a teenager again, fumbling, eager, completely inexperienced. Bill says nothing, but the hitch in his throat is a reassurance as Holden kisses him again, drawing him close. He can tell Bill has not been touched in a long time by how little it takes for him to fall apart. Holden feels wetness, warm and thick, between his fingers. Bill presses his forehead into the curve of his neck, a sigh passing through his lips. His body shudders then stills. 

What they’ve done only hits Holden once he’s forced to linger in the pause. His arousal dulls even though he badly wants Bill to lay him bare in all the same ways. Bill kisses him. It is warm, intending to set him at ease, but Holden feels stiff and distant. 

Anxiety rises in his gut as he stands and retreats to the kitchen to wash his hands. Bill must notice his disquiet because he buttons his pants and adjusts his tie. He hesitantly pads into the kitchen, lingering in the doorway as Holden pours dish soap on his hands.

He scrubs the come from his fingerprints and watches the bubbles fizz as they swirl down the drain. He thinks about work, about Nancy, about Brian and Bill and the empty house he has to go back to. The onset of his panic crawls over his spine like a thousand little needles pricking his skin. 

He grips the edge of the counter. 

“Holden?” Bill asks, his tone hushed. 

The sun has set, dyeing the apartment a two-toned blue. Bill switches on the light so they can see each other better and the dusty light fixture bathes the room in yellow. Holden turns to look at Bill. His eyes are sad but softened with understanding. They’ve been so pissed at each other the past couple weeks, the contrast is almost startling.

Bill finds a place to stand beside him. His presence is an antidote in and of itself. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Holden strains as he dries his hands on a dishtowel. His heartbeat has slowed, his breath as steady as it can be. “False alarm.” 

Bill sighs and reaches into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, only to fiddle with a rip along the side of the packaging. “Me and Nancy were a long time coming, just so you know. You had nothing to do with her decision. Our marriage would have failed whether you were a factor or not.”

“Her decision?” Holden asks. 

Bill shrugs. “She pushed for it, but I wanted it too. I know that now.”

Some of the guilt that Holden has been holding onto fractures and disintegrates. The tension relieves from his shoulders, but the situation still feels fragile, his anxiety skin deep. “Where are you staying?”

“A hotel,” Bill explains. “Just for the last few days.”

Holden remembers what Bill said about not wanting to return to the Tench family home. A hotel must be an improvement but an indirect reminder of what he had to leave behind. He sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “Do you want—" 

Bill nods before Holden can finish asking. Holden smiles, small and tenuous, and Bill chuckles at his own eagerness. He goes back to fiddling with his cigarettes. 

“Are you going to smoke one?” Holden asks. 

“Maybe,” Bill says. “In the army, we always used to have a cigarette after a hand job.”

Holden rolls his eyes to mask the flush rising in his ears and along the stretch of his neck. Bill removes a cigarette from the pack with his teeth and takes his lighter out of his back pocket.

“Balcony or roof?” Holden asks.

Bill chooses the roof.

Despite the cloudless sky, there are no stars visible from where they find themselves on the top of the apartment building. Bill blames it on the light pollution, but the city appears so quiet and nondescript. Holden feels almost calm watching the cars and pedestrians navigate through the streets. They look like little chess pieces, moving in their spaces, finding what refuge they can in the hours before Monday returns.

Bill smokes. Holden watches him. He notes the way his lips purse, wishing he could feel them against his own, if only the entrance to the roof was not ajar. Maybe the tobacco would taste sweet. Maybe it would sting.

Holden fidgets while Bill steadily twists his cigarette between two fingers. Holden can tell he’s not the first man Bill has touched or has been touched by. He’s too still.

“Was it true what you said about the army?” Holden asks.

“For some guys,” Bill says and his expression shifts, like a memory is present behind his eyes. “Are you asking if I’ve done this before?” 

“Yes.” 

“If we went any farther, you would probably be able to tell.” 

“Would I?” Holden laughs, leaning into Bill. Their shoulders brush and a balmy June breeze rustles the trees. “Who was he?”

“Some kid, same as me. Fresh out of boot camp and sent straight into Korea,” Bill explains with a shrug. “This was before Nancy. It wasn’t a part of myself I wanted to think about while I was with her.” 

“And now?” Holden asks.

Bill smirks. “Well, you’ve got me thinking about it.”

An uncomplicated warmth Holden forgot he could feel blooms in his toes. Bill has a way of putting Holden at ease with a few back-pocket jokes and a flick of his cigarette. Holden missed this: the banter between them, the informality of their conversations when they were at their closest before Atlanta, before Vacaville, before things with Nancy and Brian disintegrated. 

Bill smokes his cigarette down to the filter and ashes it against the brick. They retreat inside, falling into a pattern of comfortability Holden knew was still there in hiding. Something that was loose, rusty from not having been properly greased and put together, has clicked back into place.

Holden is relieved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy moly. 
> 
> As you can see, this story is starting to come to a close. I'm planning on a couple more chapters to tie everything up, and then I'll be moving onto some new projects! Thanks for sticking with me.
> 
> Let me know what you think about these two idiots and what they've gotten themselves into today.


	9. testimony

“Good morning” is the first thing Bill hears as he rouses awake. 

Holden is already up, sitting on the edge of the mattress with his back turned, putting on a pair of socks. Bill can see the wrinkles of his plain white t-shirt zigzagging across his back. It must be around seven in the morning because the bedroom is awash in sunlight. Stripes of it bisect the carpet and the bed, making Holden’s hair appear almost flaxen, like spun brass.

“Morning,” Bill replies.

Holden shifts and the weight of someone on the other side of the bed is both familiar and unfamiliar to Bill. It dredges up memories of stiff barrack cots and newlywed beds, the last several days spent on old sofas and a musty hotel room mattresses. Holden turns and the smile on his face is just there enough to see, somewhat hesitant, somehow acknowledging. 

“Coffee?” Holden asks. 

The intonation is his voice is almost playful. Bill nods but makes no effort to untangle himself from the sheets. His view is just fine where he is. As he stares, his chest feels twisted and warm, like the coils of a stove glowing neon red, curling in on themselves. 

Holden stands and runs his hands over his shirt to smooth out the wrinkles. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I did,” Bill says. “Thank you.”

It sounds too tender without the injection of irony. Bill has a joke readied—something about snoring and creaking springs and cotton sheet thread counts—but to make light of this would be a step backwards. Instead, Bill keeps his mouth shut. He thinks about the weight on the other side of the bed again. He thinks about how he woke up in the middle of the night and felt the heat of Holden pressing into his spine. It was something Bill could hold onto if he wanted, and he does want. He wants and wants and wants.

Holden moves towards the door, his hand falling to rest on the bedpost for a brief moment. Bill thinks about reaching out, brushing his thumb over his knuckles and saying what he means, but everything feels tentative. It needs careful consideration, and his mind is still clouded with sleep.

But then Holden asks “Hey, Bill, everything okay?” and the delicate tilt of his name in Holden’s mouth eases his resistance. 

Bill reaches out towards the bedpost, placing his palm over the back of Holden’s hand. He holds it there, not speaking, and Holden looks down to observe the way their fingers lace together. Bill is still wearing his wedding ring; he should have taken it off a while ago, not that it matters. It used to mean something, but now it looks duller, antiquated, a strip of gold he let tarnish for far too long.

“Yeah, everything’s okay,” Bill says with a small smile. “Although, I could do with that coffee.”

“Of course,” Holden replies. He returns his smile, sharing something unsaid, and everything feels easy like it did on the roof. Their hands part, but Bill feels no less close to him. “You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Say no more. I can make us something to eat.”

Holden scrambles eggs and puts down four pieces of Wonder Bread in the toaster. He turns on the radio and they listen to the staticky drone of the morning news, the forecast, and commercials about car insurance and blowout sales. Holden fiddles with the knobs every so often. He turns it from one easy rock station to the next while Bill nurses his cup of coffee from a decaled porcelain mug. 

It tastes much better than the diner brew or Quantico sludge he had been drinking since Nancy packed away their communal coffee pot. She used to make it strong, strong enough that Bill had to empty out a quart of cream into his cup and several tablespoons of sugar. Holden makes it weak, but it sits aromatic and warm on his tongue, some sort of upper-echelon supermarket brand that's been sitting unopened in the cupboard for weeks. 

Bill rearranges the few magnets on Holden’s refrigerator and watches him cook. His eyes trace the curve of his back. His thighs are clad in loose-fitting sweatpants he probably jogs in, his hair mussed at the crown of his skull. Eventually, looking becomes wanting and Bill drops his gaze to his wristwatch. On a normal day, they would be in the office already.

They have no game plan, no play-by-play outlining what to do when they have to walk into the stringent cinderblock that is the FBI Academy. For a moment, Bill wonders if this is as far as it goes—late visits and rooftop forays, hoping the neighbours don’t notice his car in the parking lot—but then he hears Holden humming quietly as he plates the eggs and toast. It calms him. The scrape of dishes and the slosh of pulpy orange juice stir up an atmosphere of domesticity: something he had been missing since Nancy uprooted any semblance of their routine. 

Holden smiles and places both plates on the table. Bill takes another sip of his coffee, wishing absentmindedly that it was spiked with whiskey or Irish cream. He sits down, and from the corner of his eye, he sees the cassette tape discarded on the coffee table. 

He clears his throat and gestures towards it. “What are we gonna do about that?”

Holden is in the midst of smearing his toast with jam when he peers over, lines creasing his forehead. “I can talk to Gregg, explain everything.”

Bill raises an eyebrow.

“Almost everything,” Holden corrects with a partial smirk. “The plan can continue as discussed. He was going to edit it anyway; it was his suggestion.”

“Is that really such a good idea?” Bill asks as he pokes the tines of his fork into his fluffy, ketchup slathered eggs. “I mean, Gunn likes to review our interviews as soon as possible, it should already be on his desk by now. Do we really need another tape mishap hanging over our heads?”

Holden shifts uncomfortably in his chair, causing Bill to wonder if he said the wrong thing. Holden drops his toast onto his plate, like his appetite has been lost, then straightens. Much of the softness in his eyes is gone, replaced by blank determination. “You heard the tape, right?” 

Bill has to stop himself from wincing as he recalls the discomfort of hearing Holden break down mid-interview. Carroll’s adenoidal voice swarms his ears like the high-pitched buzz of a dozen mosquitos. “I did.” 

“Then you understand why it has to be altered,” Holden says. He lets out a disbelieving laugh, trying to take the edge off of his own pain. “Bill, I could lose my job. The department, maybe even our study, could lose credibility if it gets out that I . . .”

He stops himself mid-sentence, giving Bill enough time to read between the lines. It takes even less thought to find something else written there, an outpouring of reality that fractures the ease of their shared morning, shared breakfast, shared bedsheets. Bill grips his coffee mug just to flex his fingers. He can feel it going cold.

“I get that. I just wonder if hiding it is the best idea,” Bill reasons. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, running through scenarios. “Alright, so we keep it from Gunn, fine, but this is a slippery slope, Holden. Going on like this is going to run you into the ground.”

“Do I have any other choice?” Holden snaps.

“I don’t know,” Bill says, biting back his frustration. “I just—I just want you to know that you can talk to me.”

Holden looks pained, like Bill has a thumb on an old wound. “Can I, Bill?” 

It stings, but the kind of sting that hurts because it's justified. “Look, Holden, I’m not going to run away from this like I did before. Understand? Just tell me what I need to do,” Bill pleads.

The pause that separates them is aching, but then Holden nods. A Talking Heads song plays on the radio while they eat in a comfortable silence, then clean up with the unspoken pressure of arriving at work like it was any other day. Bill follows Holden to the sink as he clears the table. His back is turned as he turns on the tap and rinses their dishes.

Hesitant but emboldened by need, Bill presses a hand against Holden’s hip. He feels the soft heat of the skin there, then trails his fingers beneath the hem of his shirt. Bill hears a half-surprised hum and the clatter of plates as Holden leans into the touch. Bill continues, dipping his head and pressing a kiss into the nook of his neck. It feels awfully chaste for the circumstances but somehow it's fitting. Holden sighs, the tension held in his body easing, then turns. Bill cups his face and finds his lips. 

“We can figure it out,” Bill says when they part, and for once, he means it.

*

They take separate cars to Quantico in an attempt not to draw attention to one another. Holden arrives first, striding into the office with the goal of normality and not looking out of place. Wendy and Gregg are sitting at a spare table, going over a stack of recently printed paperwork. They share a glance with each other when Holden steps into the room. 

“Good morning,” Wendy says pleasantly, not outright questioning or suspicious about his tardiness. 

Meanwhile, Gregg looks at him with wide-eyed immediacy. He stumbles up from his chair. “Holden, I, um, I need to talk to you,” he says. He nervously looks back at Wendy whose eyebrows are now creased, hands clasped atop crossed legs. “There's been a, uh, problem with the equipment . . .”

Holden wants to break his cover and smile at Gregg’s bungled attempt at speaking in code. Instead, he pulls the cassette tape from his bag and tosses it to him. “Transcribe that for me, would you? Like we discussed?”

Gregg catches it against his chest, obvious relief blooming across his face. “Oh, yeah, right, of course.”

Holden turns to Wendy. “Has Ted been down?” 

She shakes her head. “No, not yet,” she says, then looks back at Gregg shuffling around in the cabinets with bemusement. “How did the interview go? Gregg was waiting for you to come in to delve into specifics.”

“It was . . . illuminating,” Holden manages. 

Bill arrives fifteen minutes later, sunglasses shading his eyes, a fresh pack of cigarettes poking out of his jacket pocket. They are full, spare the one hanging from his mouth, gripped by tendrils of smoke. He says his hellos, his eyes lingering on Holden a little longer than they should but revealing nothing. Then, he heads towards his office—his old office.

Holden smirks. “Where are you going?”

“Guess I missed the action of being near the pit,” Bill quips as he throws his jacket down on the back of his chair and turns on the desk lamp. He shrugs, takes a stylish drag from his cigarette. “I can commute.”

Gregg chuckles as he sits himself down at a typewriter, then slips on a pair of headphones. Wendy all but rolls her eyes, while Holden goes to his own desk and settles back into the warm pull of familiarity. A lot has changed, but then again, a lot has stayed the same.

Quickly enough, Holden's optimism is disrupted by the rapt of knuckles against the office door. Ted steps inside without waiting for an answer. His dry-cleaned suit is ruler-straight at his shoulders, tie dissonantly maroon against the bleached white of his Oxford button-down. He adjusts his polished cufflinks and smiles tightly. 

“Good morning,” he says, face pinched with an attempt at friendliness. 

“Morning, sir,” Holden replies. His fingers stiffen against the keys of his typewriter, but he reveals nothing.

They offer their hellos and pleasantries. In an attempt to dispel any awkwardness, Gregg makes a throwaway comment about how nice the weather has gotten. Meanwhile, Wendy expresses concern about an issue with their paperwork. A minute later, Bill steps out from his office, another cup of coffee in his hand. He glances at Holden, his concerned expression somewhat obstructed by the reading glasses perched on his nose. 

Ted clears his throat. “I’ve been informed that there’s an interview needing my review,” he explains, “but it seems my secretary failed to request the tape.” 

Holden looks to Gregg and gives him a furtive nod, a go-ahead. Gregg stands, cranking the leaflet of paper from his typewriter, freshly inked. “We have the transcript ready from the Carroll interview,” he says. “Unfortunately, there was an issue with the tape.”

Ted raises an eyebrow as he reaches for the transcript, forehead wrinkling. He flips through the pages, inspecting them. “An issue?”

“Technical difficulties,” Gregg insists with uncharacteristic confidence. “The audio is muffled with some static and splicing, but I managed to salvage what I could. Everything is there in the transcript, sir.”

Ted looks unsure, but appears unwilling to press the issue. “Very well,” he says. “Perhaps we should invest in better recording equipment.”

Bill lets out a muffled chuckle into his coffee mug and the tension eases. However, Holden remains on edge when Ted sits down at a spare desk instead of returning to his office as usual. He begins reading through the interview, pages rifling in the resettled quiet. Holden continues working to keep his mind occupied. He tries not to imagine how Ted might evaluate the techniques used with Carroll or the information that might be extracted from his insights, Bible verses and all. 

When Ted finishes, he sets the transcript down, the pages making a hollow thwacking sound against the desk. Holden startles, fumbling a typo in the middle of his sentence. A streak of whiteout only makes the ink run, gloopy and grey. Disgruntled, he straightens and peers over. Ted looks perplexed or maybe enthralled, his thumb fiddling with the edge of the transcript, bending it and unbending it.

Ted glances around the room, eyeing the auxiliary staff who are busying themselves in different corners of the office. “Could I speak to you in the conference room?” he asks, motioning to Holden, Wendy, and Gregg. He rises from his chair. “Oh, and bring Bill as well, would you?” 

Holden sucks at his teeth but does as Ted instructs. He slides the platen of his typewriter over with a sharp, frustrated ding.

“Team meeting,” Holden tells Bill unenthusiastically, knocking on the doorjamb and poking his head into his office.

Bill smirks. “Guess playtime is over, huh?”

Holden feels heat simmer in his belly but willfully ignores it. With a sigh, Bill ashes his cigarette and stands. He slips past Holden, squeezing his shoulder as he goes: a small gesture, but Holden feels placated. His stirring nerves neutralize for half a second before he sits across from Ted in the conference room and they electrify again. Holden flexes his fists beneath the table, while Bill finds his place beside him.

Ted raises his hands to his chin in thought, index fingers steepling. “In my opinion, a follow-up interview with Carroll is needed,” he says with finality, not really an opinion at all but an instruction. “He presents a fascinating perspective, and since our time was cut short, I believe there is more room for further investigation. Agreed?”

Holden feels bile swell in his stomach. He bites down on the inside of his cheek. If he were forced to conduct another interview with Carroll, God knows whether he would cooperate, whether Holden would be able to keep himself together with the conditions for another episode aligned. He shifts in his seat, mechanisms in the office chair squeaking. Wendy looks up from her copy of the transcript, her lips pursed. She glances at Holden knowingly, and Holden wonders whether Gregg told her what happened, or if her unmatched intuition is greasing the gears in her head. 

“With all due respect, sir,” she begins, “Carroll seems rather volatile and unwilling to get to the root of his compulsions. He is much less cooperative than we first believed. I just worry that our time would be wasted with a follow-up when our resources could be spent elsewhere.”

Ted appears unconvinced. He shakes his head and presses his knuckles against the table. “This is the kind of thing that gets people interested in the work we do,” he says. “It stimulates favourable public interest, which, at the end of the day, is good for the bureau.” He smirks impishly. “It keeps our funding options open, shall we say.”

Wendy frowns, her gaze hardening. “Even so, we can’t just go after the most dramatic cases. It would jeopardize the breadth and validity of our research.” 

“I would have to agree,” Bill adds. “We’re stretched thin enough as it is.”

Ted turns to look at him. “Is that so, Agent Tench? Because it’s my understanding that you were absent for the Carroll interview,” he says with a displeased flattening of his lips. “I spoke to Agent Ford about how imperative it is that every person in the department becomes solidified in their position.”

Holden clenches his teeth, the ball of his jaw tensing as he wills himself not to jump too hastily to Bill’s defence. “Agent Smith and I were working out a few kinks in the training program,” Holden lies. “We’ll need more agents with hands-on experience if we’re going to keep to the accelerated time frame of the study.”

Gregg nods. “Yes, exactly as Holden said.”

Holden feels an undercurrent of relief run through him as Ted eases up, his body language unstiffening. 

“Very well then,” he says. “However, I maintain that a second interview with Carroll needs to be conducted, preferably with Agent Tench and Ford this time. Perhaps we can get more out of him that way.” He glances at his wristwatch. “Holden, can I speak to you . . . in private?”

Wendy and Gregg share a displeased look with one another at having been sidelined, while Holden attempts to force his anxiety down his throat before it can rise any higher, revealing itself. His esophagus feels tight, his hands clammy against the armrests. Bill glances at him. His gaze is heavy like he wants to offer a reassurance, say something, reach out to him underneath the table. But now is not the time or place. 

“Of course,” Holden manages.

Everyone shuffles out of the room, leaving Holden and Ted on opposite sides of the table, separated by a growing, malignant silence. Ted stands and paces around the room. He stops in front of the bulletin board covered in leering mug shots, inspecting them in a way that makes Holden uneasy. His back is turned to Holden when he says, “I have some news.”

“News?” Holden asks.

Ted turns around, hands perched on his hips, his suit jacket bunched at his sides. “About Atlanta,” he continues and Holden feels his stomach twist in knots. “I’ve been informed that the prosecution wants you to testify as an expert witness at Wayne William’s trial, specifically with regard to the validity of your profile.” 

Holden is silent. He carefully looks down at his hands clasped in his lap as the out corners of his vision threaten to swim. He imagines his arteries clogging with blood as his heart rate increases. His breath feels all the more shallow in his lungs. 

“I’ll have more information when the trial date is closer,” Ted continues. “I thought I should let you know so you can prepare.” 

“I—” Holden swallows. “Is it just me that they want?”

Ted nods. “Yes, just you. You were the champion of your own methods, correct?” he says and it almost reads as a slight, his tone an inch away from mocking. He appears unaffected by Holden’s sudden nervousness, that near smile of his readied in the sharp creases of his mouth. “I have complete faith in you, Holden. As does the rest of the department.”

Ted pats his shoulder then goes to the door, turning the knob and starting down the hallway. Holden hears chatter as Ted enters the main office and says his goodbyes, but he is busy imagining the sweltering courtroom, the leathery grain of a Holy Bible beneath his palm, the faces of the mothers he failed lined up in front of him like a jury. He barely registers what anyone is saying. Another door opens and shuts. 

“Crisis averted,” Gregg mutters to someone outside the conference room. It sounds more like a question.

After a moment, Holden stands, his steps not entirely his own. He finds his way back to Bill who is sitting at his desk, idly smoking his second cigarette of the day. He watches, concern etching onto his face, as Holden shuts the office door behind him and collapses into the nearest chair. He can feel the panic boiling over the boundaries of his composure. He inhales, breath stilted, and before he can realize it, Bill is there beside him, a hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey, Holden,” Bill says, his steady voice marred with urgency. “Holden, hey, look at me. You okay?”

Holden nods weakly as he finds his words. “Yeah, I—” 

“What do you need? Tell me what to do.” 

“I don’t know, Bill, I just . . .” Holden shakes his head at himself, trying to stave off any and all reminders of Atlanta, as well as the realization he will have to go through it again in the confines of a courtroom. He leans into Bill and the warmth from his palm eases him ever so slightly.

Bill sighs, thumb smoothing down his button-down as he rubs at his back. “Let’s get you out of here for a bit.”

“And go where?” Holden asks, lifting his head from his hands. 

Bill gets back to his feet and offers Holden his hand. “Come on, we can go for a drive.”

*

Holden finds a semblance of solace in an unrolled window and the radio turned down low. He listens to the syncopated beat of an outdated disco song and watches the reflection of the road pass across Bill’s sunglasses. The breeze rifles the greying ends of his hair and it feels like it has been a long time since they sat side by side in a car together, the highway stretched out in front of them like an endless strip of somewhere. 

Bill finds the path less taken, trees crowding where the forest stops and the pavement begins. The sun is out, a bright pinprick in the sky, and Holden can feel it hot on his head, warming the crown of hair. Bill grins at him and Holden smiles back, contented, letting his worry burrow elsewhere for now.

They drive for a while, not really saying anything, not really needing to. Eventually, Bill stops by the side of the road. It bifurcates into two dirt lanes, one that weaves around a cornfield and the other that snakes off into nothing. The area reminds Holden of the roadside brush that the Atlanta task force had spent combing through for days on end. Yet, here the air is void of humanity, and the sparrows are chirping. Holden has room to breathe. 

Removing the keys from the ignition, Bill gets out of the car. He leans against the open door, lighting another cigarette. Holden falls in place beside him. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Bill asks. “I can talk to Gunn if the Carroll interview is too much—” 

Holden shakes his head. “No, it was something else,” he says. “Ted told me that the prosecution wants me to testify in the Williams trial.”

Bill looks at him with furrowed brows, the cigarette in his mouth hangs limp, the lit end getting dangerously close to grazing his chin. “Jesus,” he says, then takes another slow, thoughtful drag. “Are you going to do it?”

“Not sure I have a choice,” Holden says, toeing a rock near his foot. 

“And if you did?” Bill asks, but he looks like he already knows the answer.

“I would probably do it anyway,” Holden says. He feels weighed down by his own words, but it feels less like acknowledging his own burden and more like coming to terms with his responsibility. “I owe the families that much, at least.”

Bill nods, unjudgmental, and flicks ash onto the gravel dusted rumble strips. Holden appreciates the ease of his understanding. He lets out a sigh, wanting to feel the weight of his palms on his back again, the friction of his mouth on his neck. 

“Hey, maybe you can make Williams crack,” Bill says and his smirk splinters the soured mood. He looks up at the sky, pillowed by shapeless clouds. He looks wistful, even hopeful. “We damn well know he must be guilty of something.”

“I can try.” 

Holden leans back against the car and their shoulders brush. He looks out into the empty road, the scattered patterns of sunshine against the cement as rustling leaves break the light apart. “Should I be worried?”

“Worried?” Bill asks. “About the trial?” 

“No,” Holden says with a smirk. He shrugs and motions towards their vicinity. “Not a bad place to dump a body . . . or is this a lovers’ lane?”

Bill laughs, a beautiful, boisterous kind of thing, and they get back in the car. The radio is still humming away, some dreamy, slow jam by Fleetwood Mac. Just as Holden thinks Bill is reaching for the gear stick to put the car into drive, Bill's hand instead wanders over to grip his knee. It stays there for a moment, then gradually moves up his thigh, higher and higher. Holden’s fingers meld into the skin through his dress pants, barely touching but making their mark all the same. 

“Bill,” Holden says, partly to chastise him, partly to encourage him to continue. “Are we really going to do this in a parked car? Like teenagers?”

Bill chuckles, but he does continue, and Holden wants him to. God, does he want him to. 

The balmy summer air is especially still as his zipper comes undone, the heat he feels in his fingers and the soles of his feet born from mid-August rather than late June. For once, Holden is blank. His thoughts are only centred on a handful of feelings, hazy with need. The hand between his thighs, the forehead pressed against his stomach, the mouth pressing slick into his skin.

Bill.

*

The day ends easier than it began. 

Holden pulls the finished write-up about Carroll from his typewriter and sets it on his desk. Bill has already left, but with the promise of meeting Holden at his apartment once he gathers his things from his hotel room. Gregg has also gone, hurrying back home to his wife and daughters, citing something about a tee-ball game and ballet practice. 

The office is quiet, emptied to its stark rows of filing cabinets and unoccupied desks. Holden feels comforted by its recognizable bleakness and greyish hue as he organizes his documents and locks up his desk. He almost wants to stick around, but having Bill waiting for him is a much stronger pull.

Besides Holden, Wendy is the only other person in the office who has elected to work past 5 PM. She appears focused and solitary under her dim stream of lamplight, pen tapping against a manila folder or twisting between her fingers. Holden wonders what she has to go home to outside these four walls, if she adopted that cat like she said she would. He wonders if she misses Boston, if she thinks the work they do is worth the isolation.

Holden knocks on her door, his jacket folded over his arm, briefcase in hand. “Hey, got a second?” 

“Sure,” she says, setting aside her work. “I was hoping to talk to you as well.”

Holden steps inside her office, keeping the door ajar, and offers her a quizzical look. “Why? What for?” 

“I heard about the trial,” she explains, her tone even yet somber, like she knows the internal struggle the news must bring. “I just wanted to offer my help, if you need anything with regards to preparing your testimony. I know the trial is several months away, but when the time comes.”

Holden nods, his chest swelling with gratitude. “Thank you, Wendy,” he says. “I would really appreciate that.”

“I know it must be difficult.” She pauses, looking down at her pen perched in her hand. “Have you ever considered speaking to someone about it?” she asks. “I could recommend someone if you were interested.”

“Oh,” Holden says. 

He tries to form a dismissive answer on his tongue, but Wendy is already reaching into her desk drawer. She produces a business card, eggshell white, embossed, with plain black text. She holds it out to Holden with a reassuring nod, but he hesitates to take it. 

“Her name is Dr. Mahajan, a psychologist I met at the university,” Wendy says. “She might be able to help you with your panic disorder.”

Wendy gestures towards the card again and Holden finally reaches over to take it between his fingers. He inspects it, runs a thumb along its edge. “Do you think so?” 

“I do,” Wendy says, regarding him carefully. “Even just talking can help.”

Holden slips the card into the front pocket of his button-down. He attempts to digest what seeing a psychologist might mean for him, his career, his compulsion for pretending to be okay. He always felt like he was holding himself together with a spool of fraying thread and a handful of masking tape. He thought any admittance of fault would cut through all his pretenses, leaving him falling through rotten floorboards he laid down himself. Maybe this is what he needs, a doing-away with his old methods, an opportunity to find another option. 

Holden starts towards the door, but he stops himself, hand pausing on the knob. He turns back around and looks at Wendy with a combination of admiration and appreciation. “I just wanted to thank you, for everything.”

She offers him a small smile. “Of course, Holden. We have to look out for one another in this dingy basement. No one else comes down here to check.”

He chuckles, returning her smile, then leaves. The door gently closes behind him, and he opens a new one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts.


	10. endings

Mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Bill gets a call. He sets aside his half-eaten lunch and nonchalantly answers it, expecting a police commissioner or secretary to be on the other end. Instead, he hears Nancy, her voice fizzing through the handset like a carbonated drink.

Bill straightens, a pang of panic startling his system. Out of habit, his mind immediately goes to Brian. “Nancy? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything is fine.” Bill hears the clatter of the phone cord as Nancy shifts in the pause and takes a shuddered breath. “But Brian’s social worker, Ms. Leland, has popped by for an unannounced check-in. I was hoping you could come to the house. There are several things we should probably discuss with her.”

“Right,” Bill says stiffly. He glances at his watch; he can probably leave a bit earlier than normal, although his notion of normality has shifted in the past several months. “I can be there in about thirty minutes if you want to wait.”

“Sure, if you can. I would really appreciate it.”

Her politeness sounds feigned, thickened by the hurt building just beneath it. If Bill knew no better, he would think he was on the phone with a telemarketer. Her civility is an uncomfortable reminder of how they used to be. Every formality juxtaposes the memories that are dredged up whenever Bill has the opportunity to say her name. Their relationship has been reduced to the responsibilities they share through Brian, while their two decades of marriage fade from view. It was inevitable, Bill knows, but it will take a lot of time to get used to.

“Okay, see you then.”

Bill hangs up the phone, pushing down his unease someplace it can be sorted through later. He pulls his suit jacket from the back of his chair and tugs it on as he steps out of his office, closing the door behind him. Holden notices. He perks up from where he is perched on his desk, sets his papers down, and follows Bill into the hallway.

“Hey, you okay?” Holden asks, catching up to Bill as he calls down the elevator, hand stilling on the button.

“Yeah, fine,” Bill assures him, maybe disingenuously. “Just something with Nancy I have to sort out.”

Holden nods, backing off a bit, but his concern remains in his eyes, weighing them down. The ball of his jaw tightens, hands in his pockets, fidgeting when the quiet settles. He looks at Bill with that burdened, unwavering stare of his. “Is everything alright?” he asks again, in a different way, but the sentiment is the same.

Bill sighs, wishing he could give an uncomplicated answer. “I have to meet with a social worker about Brian. Nothing to worry about though.”

Even if they have passed many of the emotional barriers that laid their roots before they even met, Bill is still unwilling to be more forthcoming than that. Holden seems to recognize this. He gives Bill a knowing half-smile and reaches out to touch his shoulder, probably wishing he could say something more, do something more. At least, Bill does. The elevator dings and his hand falls away, but Bill can still feel how it left creases in the material of his suit jacket.

“I can cover for you,” Holden offers. “If anyone happens to ask.”

Bill nods and steps into the elevator. “Make sure whatever excuse you give them is work-related,” he quips before the doors can close on him. “And of incredible importance.”

“Sure, Bill.” Holden rolls his eyes. “The future of this institution rests on your shoulders.”

“See, you get the idea.”

*

Bill sits at an unfamiliar table in an unfamiliar kitchen, trying not to bounce his leg.

The window is open, the late afternoon breeze rustling the gingham curtains. Through it, Bill can see Brian in the backyard, playing on his recently constructed swing set. He forces his sneakered feet forward and Bill listens to the rhythmic clank of chains as they twist back and forth. It overtakes the sound of Ms. Leland scraping her ballpoint pen against the forms fanned out in front of her. Her lips are pursed, her pantsuit clad legs crossed. With a flick of her wrist, the address listed in Brian’s file is promptly changed.

Bill wants this over and done with, but the words he needs to say to get there hang fire in his throat. He holds his gaze on Brian—who is now sitting in the grass and absentmindedly wheeling a toy car across his knee—and fights with the realization that they will have to tell him. But Bill has already made his choice. Nancy has too.

“Are we almost done here?” Nancy asks, watching Ms. Leland carefully.

Her shoulders are tense, hands clasped atop the table. Bill turns away from the window and pretends to have been listening. Ms. Leland shakes her head and the inevitable is pushed back a few more minutes.

“No, not quite,” she says. She sorts through another folder of government-mandated documents with polished fingernails. “I need you to sign a couple of things for me. It's just routine.”

Ms. Leland passes a form to Nancy and a different form to Bill. Two pens slide across the table to meet them, poised perpendicularly. Nancy pauses. Her hand curls around the paper for something to hold onto as she hesitantly glances at Bill. The apprehension swells, causing Bill to shift in his chair. Ms. Leland peers at them with a look that reads as somewhat disapproving. She silently picks them apart like she did the childproofing on the new house, sorting through dresser drawers and jangling door handles to find out everything she could about them. However, her expression is willed blank by the tact required of her job, her excessive politeness almost a slight.

Bill knows and has known that a bad word from her and Brian could be out of their hands. He doesn't want to think about what state custody would do to a kid like him, especially since Brian has already been through the system once. Bill would never let that happen again, but a nagging voice in his head asks him if that's exactly what he's doing now: separating from Nancy, tainting the image of the nuclear homelife they feigned to counsellors, consultants, law enforcement, and social services alike.

His pen hovers above the form, anxiety tightening in his chest. Meanwhile, Nancy clears her throat.

She sets her paper down. “Ms. Leland, before we do this, there's something Bill and I should inform you of, um, in terms of our situation.”

“Situation?” Ms. Leland purses her lips, the corners wrinkling into a frown. “Is Brian having any difficulties settling into the new house? The neighbourhood?”

“No, no. Brian is settling in pretty well, actually,” Nancy insists with a smile, despite her obvious nervousness. “He likes the backyard. Plus, the neighbour kids invited him to ride his bike last weekend, which I think was really good for him.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that,” Ms. Leland says. “What seems to be the problem then?”

“Well, Bill and I have decided that it would best for Brian if we separated.”

Bill is caught off-guard by the plainness of Nancy’s words, the steady way in which she says them. He was expecting her to ease into it, butter up Ms. Leland with pleasantries and small talk to lessen her judgement, but she doesn't. There's a pause. Bill readies himself for the scandalization. His stomach twists with an anxiety born more from antiquated notions his mother held about housewife divorcees than anything in 1981. Unsurprisingly, the moral outrage never comes.

Mr. Leland appears taken aback at first, but then she nods, her expression shifting to one of understanding. “I see,” she says. “Have you spoken to Dr. Moritz about this?”

“We have,” Bill assures. “We understand this needs to be handled delicately.”

“Brian knows his father and I are taking some time away,” Nancy adds, “but he doesn't know the full extent of our decision.”

Bill gives Nancy a nod, trying to express something to her that resembles gratitude. Ms. Leland glances at Bill and Nancy sitting beside each other. She smiles empathetically.

“I see a lot of parents who deal with similar issues,” she says, putting stark professionalism on hold, her eyes warming. “Caring for a child who has experienced trauma can often put a lot of unwelcome strain on a marriage, whether you plan for it or not. I trust that you know what's right for your son, and for yourselves, and I appreciate your cooperation with our program. It makes it easier on us when parents have their child’s best interest in mind.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Nancy says and her voice sounds tight.

The weight Bill has been carrying with him all this time sloughs off his shoulders, if only for a moment. He feels relieved, damn tired, but relieved all the same.

After Ms. Leland says her goodbyes to Brian in the backyard, they walk her to the door.

“Oh, Mr. Tench,” she says before she goes. “Are you planning on moving into a place of your own? Because, if so, your emergency contact listing will need to be updated.”

Bill thinks of Holden, but he knows, realistically, that he can’t bum around his apartment for much longer, living off of his coffee and his courtesy. Not without paying his share of the rent. What he really needs is somewhere he can host Brian on the weekends, maybe someplace that allows pets, close by the park. Possibilities run through his head, tinged with the ache that comes with all changes. But it could be his own, a place to co-raise his son if Nancy allows him it.

“Yes,” Bill says. “Somewhere kid-friendly.”

Ms. Leland lets out a short, polite laugh. “Well, be sure to keep me posted. You have my card.”

Nancy closes the door as Ms. Leland gets into her car. The latch clicks shut and a descending quiet pulls them apart. Bill hovers by the foyer while Nancy goes back to the kitchen. She putters around, tucking the chairs back under the table, righting the dishtowels that hang on the oven handle. 

“There are some of your things in the garage still,” she calls. “I, uh, put them in boxes if you want to grab them before you go.”

“Right, thanks.”

“Hey, were you really thinking of getting your own place soon? Because I was hoping to put the house up for sale, before the market changes, you know.”

Bill meets her in the kitchen. Somehow, these conversations are easier now, the discomfort they bring dulled. “Yeah, if I can find one. Have any pamphlets you can give me?”

“More than you could handle.” Nancy chuckles and it feels oddly casual, the way she braces against the counter, one hand on her hip. “If you could clear your stuff out from there as well, that would be a big help.”

“Sure.”

Bill glances at Brian through the window still hanging ajar, and he remembers why he really came here. “We should tell him.”

Nancy nods and a familiar, sombre feeling floods every nook and cranny of the house.

She goes to the backdoor and calls Brian inside. He looks up from his dirt worn Converse, his expression unrevealing. He walks to the patio with his head bowed towards his chest, small shoulders slumped. There is a round grass stain on the front of his shirt which is striped black and yellow like a bumblebee. Bill finds himself remembering a day long since passed: Brian running through the churchyard, his Sunday best stained brown and green at the knees like he kneeled in mint chip ice cream.

If Bill could live through those moments again, he would stop to notice how they existed before all of this, even if their fractures were different shapes, not gone altogether. 

But he missed his chance that time; he hopes to have a second one.

Nancy grabs Brian's hand and they step inside. She offers to get him a snack as he washes off his muddy palms, even puts animal crackers and apple juice on the counter, but he shakes his head. He looks at Bill, and for once Bill feels like his son is really seeing him, not just looking through his chest.

“Hey, buddy,” Bill says and ruffles his hair.

“Hi,” Brian replies, almost too quiet to catch, but Bill will take it.

Nancy smiles at them, close-mouthed and thin, but Bill will take that too.

They sit down in the living room, Bill and Nancy on either side of the floral pattern upholstered sofa, Brian perched in the middle. Her hand rests comfortingly on Brian’s shoulder as he fidgets with a thread hanging off of his sleeve. Bill can tell he knows something is wrong, too formal, reminiscent of Friday appointments and musty waiting rooms. Nancy shares a look with Bill. He gives her a go-ahead nod despite the anxiety tying his stomach into complex nautical knots.

“Brian, sweetie, your dad and I have something we need to tell you.”

Brian shifts his attention to Nancy, searching her face. He raises his thumb to his mouth but stops just shy of chewing on his nail. He looks much younger for his age, and his silence does nothing to rectify that.

“You did nothing wrong,” Bill assures, slumped forward to level himself with his son. His throat tightens and he has to force the words through. “This is just between me and your mother. I love you. Your mom loves you. Remember that, okay?”

Brian, of course, says nothing in reply. Bill almost thinks it would be easier if Brian would scream at him or throw a temper tantrum on the kitchen floor. But, in truth, most things fall apart in shards, disintegrating over time, instead of burning with sudden, white heat into nothing. Their family was a failed experiment, flawed from the beginning, but it meant something. It means something still.

“Your mother and I have been taking some time apart to think things over, as you probably noticed,” Bill continues. “Well, we decided it needs to stay that way.”

“We know you must be really confused about all of this,” Nancy quickly adds. “Your dad will still come to see you every chance he gets. We’ll be living in different houses, me and you in this one and your dad in another, but we’re still a family, alright? And we can figure this out—”

“—as a family,” Bill says.

Nancy nods. “As a family.”

Bill waits. He waits for any indication that Brian understands, that Brian feels anything at all. It comes unexpectedly when he sees tears dampening Brian’s eyelashes, threatening to spill down his cheeks as his head tucks inwards. As Nancy rubs his back and tries to console him, Brian reaches out for Bill, head falling to his chest.

Bill holds his son, and his son cries.

*

Bill packs the boxes into his car, the ones hastily scribbled with a lopsided B. He has no real place to put them yet. They stack high in his backseat, filled with dusty mementos and photo albums, things he kept from his time in the army, things he needs to throw away. He puts an old set of golf clubs in the passenger side and a suitcase full of clothes that might not even fit anymore in the trunk.

Nancy watches from the porch while Brian stays inside the house, set up in front of the TV with cartoons and a can of Pringles that will inevitably spoil his dinner. Nancy lets it slide, considering the circumstances. Bill has already said goodbye to him, well, not so much a goodbye as a see-you-soon. Brian needs time to process, to understand, and Bill feels he has done all he can, for now, to make sure that happens.

He shuts the car door and finds the pack of Camels in his pocket, pulls a cigarette free with his teeth. Nancy peers at him from beneath her cat-eye sunglasses. She looks like she did when they first started dating in high school: reserved, frustrated, pretending she was too good for anything but the cookie-cutter life she read about in housewife magazines. She always postured to people, maybe to avoid judgement, maybe to ensure no one would notice the sadness that seeped through her at indeterminate times.

“Can I bum one?” Nancy asks.

Bill nods. He takes another from his pack and hands it to her. With a flick of a spark wheel, he lights his cigarette, then lights hers. She takes a thoughtful drag, smoke rolling from the corners of her mouth. She stares down at the ashy tip. “How many times did we say we were going to quit?”

“Too many to count,” Bill says with a chuckle.

Nancy appears out of his reach now, standing still but moving further and further away from him. His hands itch with the need to hold on, to pull her back. But her posture is closed off, an arm crossed against her chest to prop up her elbow as she nurses her cigarette. Her expression is indifferent as she watches the static suburb that sprawls out from the driveway onwards, quiet and unassuming, nothing but pavement and houses made of paper. If she has any remaining reservations about ending their marriage, they stay out of sight.

“Are we making the right choice?” Bill asks. The sting of the tobacco is the only thing that can loosen what he wants to say from the roof of his mouth. “For Brian?”

“Are there any right choices, really?” Nancy asks. She sounds less defeated then she used to, acceptance softening the outline of her words. “We did the best we could, Bill.”

They smoke their unshared cigarettes down to the nub without speaking, and Bill finally lets her go.

*

A phone call later, Bill meets Holden at the usual place. At five o’clock on a Wednesday, it's understandably empty of its usual crowd, the lone bartender busier flipping through a crumpled magazine than serving anyone drinks.

Bill finds Holden at a table near the back. Above him, a stagnant fan is jostled by the draft as he takes a sip from his beer, his back turned towards the door. Bill just wants to look, settle in the space where Holden has yet to notice him. It feels safe there, suspended in time, watching Holden's restless hands straighten the coaster on the table, his tie loosened and cuffs rolled to his forearms.

Inevitably, Bill has to break the moment. “Save any for me?” he asks as he walks up to the table and sits down, gesturing to the beer Holden is palming.

Holden smirks and Bill flags the bartender down to order one for himself. His nerves lull as it washes over his tongue, a welcome relief from the sweltering heat that adds weight to their impending conversation. Sweat collects on his collarbone and his temples. 

“How did it go?” Holden asks. He’s hesitant, like the answer might be something he needs to confront, but more apparent is the concern pinching the place between his eyebrows.

“As good as it could have.” Bill sighs through his nose, looks away, takes another sip of beer. “We told Brian about, uh, you know.”

“How did he take it?”

Bill recalls the wetness on the collar of his shirt, the feel of Brian against his shoulder, and his stomach sinks. “He was upset, to say the least.”

Holden frowns. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“How are you taking it?”

The question hits Bill harder than he expects, an inexplicable sting rising to his eyes that he quickly blinks it away. “I, um, hm.” Bill falters, clearing his throat where the words have congested. He wills some better ones to replace them, but they never come.

Holden promptly reaches across the table to lay his hand on Bill’s wrist, his fingers brushing his pulse point and pulling Bill in like a lifeline. “Hey,” Holden says gently. “You can talk to me.”

Bill nods, set at ease by his touch.

“I just—I guess I feel like a bad dad,” he finally admits, looking down at the stained tabletop. 

In all truth, he has never felt like a good one. There have been blips: Brian attending his first day of school and Nancy taking photographs of him on the lawn, Bill teaching him how to ride a bike, family road trips and Sunday afternoons spent at the park. But fatherhood has always been painted with dread for him. He never really wanted it, even if he convinced himself he did for Nancy’s sake, but he loves his son too much to take any of it back, or wish things had turned out differently. 

“What if this fucks Brian up? Irreparably?” Bill asks. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

“You’re not a bad dad,” Holden assures, and his fingers press into Bill a little bit harder. “You’re trying to do the right thing.”

Bill shakes his head. He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefingers, a stress headache clinging to his temples. “The kid has already been through enough. And now me and Nancy are putting him through this? Jesus Christ.”

“You deserve to be happy, Bill,” Holden insists. “Sticking around in a marriage way past its expiration date does no one any favours, least of all Brian.” He pauses, bites down on the inside of his lower lip. “Do you—do you still love her?”

A pitfall appears in front of Bill, but in no way is the question accusatory. More than anything, Holden looks worried. His hand stays where it is, unmoving, and Bill feels reassured that this thing between them is as sure as it can be.

“In a way,” Bill says softly. “Not like I used to, but after that much time, people take a piece of you and never let go, you know.”

“I understand.”

Bill meets Holden’s eyes, holds his stare, silently pleading for him to feel the same way that he does. “You have a piece of me too, Holden. Remember that.”

Bill wants to say more, so much more, but the thoughtful look Holden offers him makes Bill realize that everything he needs to say, Holden already knows.

The bartender begins cleaning a table nearby and Holden is forced to retract his hand, but he pauses long enough to discreetly run his thumb along Bill’s knuckles. “I will.”

They finish their beers, their conversation marked by inconsequential small talk that settles the tension and comforts Bill like nothing else could. Holden recounts his day at the office, lamenting how the coffee machine in the hallway broke and he was on hold for most of the afternoon trying to get a repairman to trek down to the basement to fix it. His smile is easy again, and everything feels righted, reminiscent of Road School when joking around between tedious classes in straight-laced precincts was all that kept them sane.

“Oh, yeah,” Holden adds, “I called Missouri State Penitentiary about the Carroll interview.”

He says it so casually, Bill nearly forgets all the concern that surrounded it. “Yeah? Did you book one like Gunn wanted?”

“I did, unfortunately,” Holden says with a smirk, comically tipping his beer towards Bill. “Carroll agreed to it. They want us back in by mid-July.”

“Us?” Bill asks, raising his eyebrows. “Was Gregg unavailable this time?”

Holden chuckles. “Yeah, us. You heard what Ted said. Believe me, I would not subject you to this guy unless I had to.”

“Well, hopefully he has something good to give us,” Bill says, taking a gulp of his second beer. He is reluctant to sour the mood, but he has to ask. “Are you going to be okay?”

Holden pauses to consider it, but the question does nothing to dull his smile. “I think so.”

“Good.” Bill returns his grin, downs the rest of his drink, then brings up a matter of his own. “Nancy wants me to clear my stuff out of the old house before we sell it,” he says. “I told her I would do it.”

The underlying suggestion is apparent, which Holden picks up on without missing a beat. “Do you need me to come with you?”

*

The house feels different than it used to.

Bill jams his key into the lock and turns it, the door sighing open like it's been sitting untouched for months. Holden shuffles in after him, a spare box tucked beneath his arm. Something about the inside has become less recognizable. Bill has a harder time imagining the furniture in its rightful place than he did when he initially came home to find it empty.

They get to work without needing to speak, packing away the remaining clothes in the bedroom closet and the shoes by the door like they meant to the first time Holden was here. Bill pushes down his sentimentality as the rooms become even emptier, the walls even barer. Some work will have to be done before the house can be put on the market. Cracks bisecting the ceiling need to be patched, the carpet needs to be cleaned, the scuffs on the walls painted over, and every corner touched up and scrubbed at until any indication the house was lived in at all is washed away.

Bill will leave that up to Nancy. She started this, so she can be the one to see it through.

In the office, Holden passes a hand over the pile of dust-covered folders, pressing them with his fingerprints. Bill watches from the hallway, his eyes flirting between Holden and the space where they kissed for the first time. Desire stirs in his stomach, and he wants him, just not here, not now. This place no longer belongs to anyone.

“What do you want me to do with these this time?” Holden teases, standing up and hauling several boxes out of the room.

The wounds their past arguments laid are still sore in some spots, but Holden smirks and Bill forgets about all that. Everything is, or will be, forgiven.

Bill laughs. “Stop dawdling.”

They pack the things into both of their cars, piling them on every inch of available floor and trunk space. In late June, the sun sets closer to nine o’clock, and the remaining few hours of daylight feel lazier as a result. The sky is dusky and gradient like a watercolour, the air warm and thick like a haze. There are middle schoolers out past curfew riding their bicycles up and down the street, while neighbours drink iced tea and read magazines on porches and backyard patios. The Fourth of July is just around the corner; it pledges pool parties and cookouts and firework shows, all drenched in typified suburban Americana.

Bill realizes now that he was never really part of any of that. Without Nancy, he can look on as a bystander, see it for its promises and artificial comforts that comforted him all the same. The sun dips behind the horizon and the night presents a beginning that settles in the old and familiar but brings about something new.

Holden shuts the car door. He looks at Bill who is looking out into the street, and his smile is steadying, keys hanging around his finger. “Hey, Bill, do you want to get going?”

Bill offers him a hopeful smile. “I do.”

*

July 1981

_JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI_

Missouri is much easier for Holden to stomach the second time around.

The sun is streaming through a slit in the curtains when he wakes up on a Thursday morning. He rolls over on the squeaky hotel mattress and finds Bill, still asleep despite the alarm clock blaring on his side of the bed. Holden resists the urge to wake him and instead props himself up on his elbows, reaching over to smash the snooze button with the flat of his palm.

He showers in what is supposed to be his individual, private hotel room, seamlessly divided by connecting doors. He shaves, turns on the television to watch the seven o’clock news, and irons their FBI grade suits until not a crease is in sight. By the time he's done fixing his hair in the mirror, Bill is just getting out of bed, mumbling something about needing coffee, and strong coffee at that. 

Holden steps into the room and tosses Bill his suit, folded neatly on a clothes hanger. “Good morning.”

“What time is it?” Bill asks.

“Almost eight,” Holden says, checking his watch. “We’re expected at the penitentiary by nine.”

Bill sighs, running a hand down his face to rid it of sleep. He looks down at the suit draped over the bedsheets. “Hey, thanks,” he says, then motions Holden over. 

Bill pulls him in by the lapel of his suit, their lips meeting, habitual and sure. Bill raises a callused palm to cup Holden’s cheek, his fingers splaying out into his hair. The warmth is both too much and too little, and Holden absentmindedly wishes for a different sort of heat, one they, unfortunately, have no time for.

“You’re gonna wrinkle it again,” Holden teases against Bill’s mouth when the kiss eventually breaks.

Bill rolls his eyes. “I’ll be careful.”

From the moment they park outside the prison to the moment they hand in their gun and badges guns at the gate, Bill keeps his eyes on Holden, carefully watching for any of the signs Wendy and Dr. Mahajan recommended they look out for. But Holden is as prepared as he will ever be as they wait for the go-ahead from the prison staff. Holden lets the weight of the tape equipment underneath his arm centre him, dispelling the nervousness that had stalked him the last time he was here.

Bill, like always, is a steadying presence. Holden watches as Bill smokes, settling into the familiarity of Bill's favourite brand of cigarettes and the posture of Bill's fingers as he pinches one between his teeth. Smoke rings twirl mid-air, disintegrating before they can reach the space in front of Holden. Holden smiles, thoroughly amused, and Bill makes a point of blowing more.

After several minutes of waiting, a guard steps past them to unlock the gate. It buzzes and slides open with a deafening clang. Somewhere down the hallway, Holden hears the reminiscent clanking of ankle chains and handcuffs, a stifled chuckle, a chair sliding against the cement floor.

“Ready?” Bill asks.

Holden nods, a focus and determination he thought he had lost a long time ago seizing him and refusing to let go. “I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your support! This was a long time coming and it's officially the longest thing I've ever written and completed. I'm sad to see it end but I'm also relieved that it's over.
> 
> Please let me know what you think.


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